Whether you see improvement in DX12 will depend on your specific GPU and CPU. Here are the benchmarks I ran. (with updated AMD and nvidia drivers)
Specs are:
CPU: X5670 @ 4.4Ghz 6-core w/ HT (hyperthreading)
GPU: GTX 1070
1600x900 (GPU never exceeded 70% utilization)
I ran the benchmarks in 4-core and 6-core mode, with hyperthreading on and off for comparison:
DX11 Graphics Benchmark:
4C/4HT: 15.1ms (66 fps)
4C/8HT: 12.8ms (78 fps)
6C/6HT: 12.7ms (79 fps)
6C/12HT: 12.8ms (78 fps)
DX12 Graphics Benchmark:
4C/4HT: 14.3ms (70 fps)
4C/8HT: 12.6ms (79 fps)
6C/6HT: 12.1ms (83 fps)
6C/12HT: 11.8ms (85 fps)
I ran the game at low-res to measure the *CPU* impact of switching to DX12. My results show that if you are *CPU-limited*, DX12 may be an improvement.
If you're running a modern CPU at 4GHz or more, you probably won't see improvement. If you're GPU-limited, you probably won't see improvement.
If you're running Win7, there's no point in upgrading IMHO. The improvements in framerate were minor, and would only apply to certain people.
EDIT: For those who think it's BS that a game would run slower in DX12, keep in mind the following:
* The DX11 drivers are *very* mature
* DX12, at best, will only show minor GPU performance improvements, unless you're on AMD
* Even on AMD, significant speedup occurs *only if the game takes advantage of Async Compute*
* Companies have to write *different code* for DX12 than they do for DX11
The last one is the key. First-pass implementations of a new version of DX usually aren't faster. DX12 is especially challenging to implement, and even harder to retrofit if your engine wasn't designed for it.
The bad news is, clearly the engine wasn't designed with DX12 in mind. But that's understandable, given only 50% of gamers run Windows 10, and almost 100% of gamers have a DX-11 compatible setup.
The good news is, over time Civ6 will probably run as fast or better in DX12 no matter what setup you have. If you're lucky, they'll even optimize the game for it, and if/when they do, the game will run noticeably better than DX11 on certain hardware.
EDIT 2: Forgot to include my AI results...
AI benchmark
4C/4HT: 18.3 seconds/turn
4C/8HT: 19.1 seconds/turn
6C/6HT: 18.2 seconds/turn
6C/12HT: 19.5 seconds/turn DX11 (17.6 in strategic view)
Bear in mind that the AI results right now are sort of meaningless. The benchmark are still influenced by graphics, which is silly, and "Quick Combat" and "Quick Movement" are just sped up, not instantaneous, so there's a minimum turn time right now no matter how fast your machine is.
