AMD Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 “Polaris” Cannot Run Forspoken

In the past few days, Square Enix has released the role-playing game Forspoken, which has had mixed reception, to say the least. On the technology side, the game was the first to support Directstorage, which in short simplifies the flow of data to and from NVM Express connected SSDs. The technology that is part of DirectX 12, as usual, is accompanied by many other optional features in the interface.

Now the game seems to have taken DirectX 12 a step further than others, which affects the graphics cards that are capable of running the game. AMD draws the short straw with the “Polaris” graphics architecture, the fourth-generation Graphics Core Next (GCN) and part of the Radeon RX 400 series from summer 2016, and later the Radeon RX 500 from spring next year. Meanwhile, the game can still be powered by Nvidia’s old “Maxwell” architecture on a Geforce GTX 900 series from fall 2014.

The DirectX 12 Ultimate interface includes many features, but not all of them are mandatory for integration into a graphics architecture or for use by game developers. In other words, a graphics card that supports DirectX 12 clearly doesn’t support all the features of DirectX 12. The details are instead in the fine print with version numbers as DirectX 12_0, DirectX 12_1, and DirectX 12_2.

The problem with AMD’s Polaris architecture seems to lie in the fact that it only has functional support for DirectX 12_0, while Nvidia’s two-year-old Maxwell supports DirectX 12_1 – the latter apparently a requirement to run Forspoken. To be able to start the game, on the AMD side, a graphics card with the oldest “Vega” architecture, the fifth generation of GCN, which is related to custom solutions, is required with Radeon VII, RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56.

At the same time that AMD’s Polaris architecture lacks Forspoken support, it can be said that older mid-range cards still don’t deliver the performance for a fully satisfactory experience. Still, a graphics architecture with a relatively short time on its neck no longer being able to run new games is unusual, but now that Forspoken has made the move, it likely won’t be far before more games turn to requiring DirectX 12_1 support.

Still using an AMD Radeon 400 series or Nvidia GTX 700 series or earlier?