Forspoken Polaris support is broken
Gamers report that they are unable to play Forspoken with some Radeon GPUs due to incompatibility with DirectX12 API.
Redditor xCuri0 reports that AMD Polaris architecture is incompatible with the game Forspoken, as the game requires a higher version of the API functions. Although the architecture does support DirectX12 graphics API, Forspoken requires a higher Feature Level.
The base DX12 specification is supported by nearly all graphics cards still used to this day, however, certain capabilities and newer technologies are locked behind the so-called Feature Levels. The highest level being the Ultimate (12_2) compatible with Turing, RDNA2 and Xe-HPG architecture.
Some older graphics cards such as Radeon RX 400 series (GCN4) were introduced with DirectX12 support, but they only work on 12_0 Feature Level. Higher level is supported by GCN5 (Vega) and NVIDIA Maxwell architecture but only the newer GPUs so GM107/GM108 are also incompatible.
AMD Polaris architecture has been used for graphics cards such as Radeon RX 480 (2016), Radeon RX 580 (2017) and Radeon RX 590 (2018), which were powered by Polaris 10, Polaris 20 and Polaris 30 GPUs respectively.
Whether these mid-range GPUs should be used to play such a demanding title, is a different story. It is worth noting, though, that there are games that require an even higher Feature Level (12_2) such as Metro Exodus Enhanced.
| Microsoft DirectX 12 Feature Levels | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| VideoCardz.com | 12_2 (Ultimate) | 12_1 | 12_0 |
| GPU Architectures | NVIDIA: Turing, Ampere, Ada AMD: RDNA2, RDNA3 Intel: Xe-HPG | NVIDIA: Pascal, Maxwell 2 AMD: Vega Intel: Gen9 | NVIDIA: Maxwell 1/2 AMD: Polaris, Hawaii Intel: Gen9 |
| Ray Tracing (DXR 1.1) | Yes | No | No |
| Variable Rate Shading (Tier 2) | Yes | No | No |
| Mesh Shaders | Yes | No | No |
| Sampler Feedback | Yes | No | No |
| Conservative Rasterization | Yes | Yes | No |
| Raster Order Views | Yes | Yes | No |
| Tiled Resources (Tier 2) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bindless Resources (Tier 2) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Typed UAV Load | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Source: Reddit, Wccftech, TechPowerUP
