A New Deus Ex: Mankind Divided DX12 Patch Arrives Today

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the sequel to the highly-revered Deus Ex: Human Revolution launched using the DirectX 11 render. Later on, the DirectX 12 API was added which caused quite a large number of bugs and performance issues. In particular, NVIDIA hardware seemed to perform worse when selecting the latest API and this prevented me from conducting a performance analysis article. Thankfully, the developer has taken all feedback on board and promised to release patches to address people’s concerns. According to an update on the game’s Steam page, a new patch will arrive today (23/06/2016) and fix a large portion of the issues attributed to DirectX 12. Here is the list in full:

• Added support for the Jensen Story: System Rift DLC mission. Re-unite with Frank Pritchard, Adam’s friend and former colleague at Sarif Industries, and assist him in hunting down information on the mysterious Santeau Group. Desperate to get more information, Pritchard targets one of the most secure data banks ever created – the Palisade Blade. In agreeing to help, Adam may also be able to uncover hints as to who the Illuminati really are.
• Added Lens Flare option.
• Improvement of Tobii EyeTracking’s cover at gaze: Better responsiveness. Separate the responsiveness setting from Extended View. Filter the gaze point harder to get better snapping.
• Tobii EyeTracking’s gun arm at gaze (new feature). When using Nanoblade, P.E.P.S or Tesla augmentations, the gun arm will aim in the direction of your gaze, quick shoot by releasing the trigger early or hold for continued aiming.
• Fixed an issue where Extended view is enabled when shopping.
• Fixed an issue where Extended view – Gun arm weapon reticles are moving.
• Various crash and bug fixes.
• UPDATE: Fixed issue with Tessellation and some cables in Prague.

Users are able to utilize the awaited DirectX 12 Graphics API. To activate this you are required to do the following:

• Within your Steam Library, right-click on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
• Select ‘properties’ from the context menu and navigate to the Beta tab.
• From the dropdown menu, select dx12_preview then close the window.
• After the game has downloaded the DirectX 12 supported build you can then toggle DirectX 12 from either the launcher window or from the Display options within the game.
  Note that DirectX 12 requires a restart of the game if (de-)activated from within a running Deus Ex: Mankind Divided game session.
  o WARNING: Using the DirectX 12 API can offer better performance on some systems, however, it will not be beneficial on all.
  o Multi-GPU is not yet supported in this patch.
  o If you encounter problems with DirectX 12, we recommend turning it off again. There are no visual or gameplay differences between the two DirectX versions.
  o Stereoscopic 3D with DX12 is supported on AMD, but on new windows versions “3D display mode” must be enabled through the Windows “Advanced display settings” menu.
  o As always, make sure that your drivers are up to date.

• Fixed an issue where some object would appear black.
• Fixed a shadow issue.
• Improved DirectX 12 CPU usage.
• Various performance improvements and bug fixes.

Known DX12 issue:

• There is a known bug that causes some very high-end cards to regress relative to DirectX11. Improvements have been made but this is being further investigated by the development team.

While we expect this patch to be an improvement for everyone, if you do have trouble with this patch and prefer to stay on older versions, we have made a Beta available on Steam, v1.0_build524.6, v1.0_build524.7, v1.1_build524.10, v1.2_build524.15, v1.3_build524.17, v1.4_build545.4 and v1.4_build545.5 that can be used to switch back to previous versions.

We will keep monitoring for feedback and will release further patches as it seems required. We always welcome your feedback!

This looks like a huge update which should make the DirectX 12 mode more stable and dramatically reduce the CPU loads. As a result, it’s a valuable patch for those running lower-end processors who might be experiencing a large bottleneck that they’d initially expected.