AMD denies DirectX criticism

Hardware manufacturer AMD has claimed that it is fully committed to supporting Microsoft's DirectX technology, despite previously describing it as "getting in the way" of PC performance.

GPU worldwide developer relations manager Richard Huddy has claimed that his comments to website bit-tech.net two weeks ago were taken out of context, following a new interview with technology site CRN.

Huddy suggests that only a small number of "very high-end developers" have ever expressed a desire to circumvent the DirectX API (application programming interface) - apparently including Battlefield developer DICE and Crysis developer Crytek.

"It's not something most developers want," claimed Huddy. "If you held a vote among developers, they would go for Direct X or Open GL, because it's a great platform."

Huddy also denied that his comment about developers wanting to, "make the API go away" should be taken literally. "Making the API go away doesn't actually mean there is no longer any API," he said. "They would take a different form."

However, Huddy did reiterate his comments that GPU platforms on the PC far exceeded home consoles in terms of performance - insisting that APIs and other middleware technology had to innovate.

"If you take the Xbox 360, it's absolutely dwarfed by modern hardware - a game on a PC will always have a relatively thick software layer, a console does not." he said. "We're putting a lot more horse power at the high-end. But the software layer that lies between the PC running DirectX and the game itself needs to get involved in a lot of transformation."

"We're simply letting Microsoft know the feedback we get from game developers," said Huddy. "We've heard from the high-end and the low-end. The very high-end want something more in terms of performance. That's information we give to Microsoft. They've done a tremendous job continuing to innovate with DirectX. Game developers, AMD and Nvidia offer constructive feedback because we want to see them continue to innovate."