A new 3DMark Feature Test has been released to check for new coding tricks introduced in DirectX 12 Ultimate and made possible by AMD and Nvidia graphics architectures. In our early tests, the Nvidia RTX 3080 has a significant lead over the AMD RX 6800 XT.

DirectX 12 Ultimate finally boasts a number of features that will make tomorrow's games a little more mandible-loosening. The most interesting of these is the mesh shader, which allows developers to improve performance by changing the way invisible polygons are cut out. This may sound a bit tedious, but bear with me, as this is something that I hope developers will support.

The reason why you should care is that, if handled correctly, untapped performance could be greatly improved. Compared to traditional rendering, the worst-case scenario is a frame rate nearly eight times higher. In case you're wondering, yes, it looks exactly the same, it just changes the way the game engine handles 3D models.

The venerable graphics benchmark 3DMark has just received an update focusing on this new technology. The new mesh shader feature test shows a fairly simple looking room inhabited by the same incredibly detailed columns that have been replicated hundreds of times. Honestly, it doesn't look that amazing, but this is a technical demo and the actual model is not that important.

In this benchmark, the same scene is run twice. First using the traditional culling method and then using mesh shaders. The scene looks the same, but the difference in performance is staggering. On the latest, almost impossible-to-buy Nvidia hardware, the performance has gone from around 60 fps to nearly 600 fps.

Since this is a DirectX 12 Ultimate feature, both the latest cards from Nvidia and AMD support it. Depending on how you look at it, Nvidia's is definitely better news, but there is good news for both.

Nvidia's RTX 3080 first maintains a very healthy frame rate, and when switching to Mesh Shaders, it lives up to its promise, delivering a frame rate of 584 fps.

The Radeon RX 6800 XT's performance was not that impressive to begin with, and even after Mesh Shaders is implemented, it ultimately lags behind Nvidia's card.

This is with the latest drivers for both cards, which is a significant improvement over the previous drivers for AMD's GPUs. There is a screenshot of the performance above, which shows 469 fps with the new driver compared to 219 fps with the previous driver.

Nvidia has an undeniable lead here, using both traditional culling techniques and mesh shaders; since Nvidia introduced support in 2018 with the Turing architecture for RTX 20 series cards, Mesh Shading Given that it has been touting the benefits, it may not be a huge surprise.

But honestly, I wouldn't mind any card if moving to mesh shaders meant a significant increase in frame rates. Frankly, I just want to be able to actually purchase one.