New DirectX 12 preview could pave the way for PCs to become more like an Xbox or PS5

pcgamer.com:

At the end of March Microsoft announced a new preview version of its Agility SDK(opens in new tab) (via Guru3D(opens in new tab)) which incorporates a new feature that could deliver gaming PCs that no longer use traditional system memory. Just like an Xbox Series X.

For now, though, GPU Upload Heaps is here to allow both the CPU and the graphics card simultaneous access to the video memory strapped to the GPU. This means that your PC will no longer need to copy large chunks of data from the CPU to the GPU, or therefore retain copies of data both in system memory and in VRAM.

The upshot of this is that, in certain situations, you will see increased game performance because CPU and RAM utilisation should be decreased. 

GPU Upload Heaps seems to be another step on the journey started by the introduction of the resizable base address register (BAR) feature a few years back. That made it possible for Windows to manage the graphics card's memory pool, but now the new feature means your PC's processor can have direct access to that VRAM.

On the side of the user that means, so long as you have resizable BAR enabled on your system, there's nothing else necessary for you to be able to access the new GPU Upload Heaps feature. Though, realistically, it's not going likely to be a feature visible to gamers in terms of turning it off and on, as it's a developer-level feature aimed at giving them the tools to squeeze as much performance out of a system as possible.

And, because it is new, it's not likely to find its way into games for a while yet. Though it's fundamentally going to be similar to the way Microsoft's own Xbox Series X(opens in new tab)/S consoles interact with the shared VRAM that makes up the entirety of their systems,