Here’s some good news for Fortnite players running the game on higher-end rigs. Epic just updated the game with a DX12 code-path. With the arrival of a DX12 update, the game now offers up better performance and higher framerates. The DX12 optimizations allow for better CPU utilization across multiple cores. This makes the performance impact especially noticeable on older multi-cores like first-gen Ryzen.
This isn’t the end of the road for Fortnite and DX12, though. Epic states that it will continue “adding features to Fortnite that were made possible by DX12.”
This could mean any number of things. DXR ray-tracing, for instance, depends on DX12 support. Will a competitive shooter like Fortnite implement it? We can’t say for sure, but considering that Minecraft is set to receive it’s own RTX avatar, anything’s possible. Apart from that, a more mature DX12 code will help achieve higher framerates. Fortnite’s not a particularly intensive title. With judicious settings tweaks, 4K/60 is actually viable on a wide range of GPUs. What’s DX12 optimization will fix is CPU bottlenecking that prevents gamers from hitting high framerates for those 144 Hz panels. Let’s see where Epic goes with this.
