Any chance at all that DirectX 12 will be back ported to Windows 7?

[futurefields]

Is there any chance that it would?

 

[Red Hawk]

I'd say no. Anyone who cares enough about DX12 should just jump on the free Windows 10 upgrade. Backporting DX12 would involve backporting the whole Windows Display Driver Model 2.0 to Windows 7, and that's just not worth the investment to Microsoft, if it's even possible.

 

[Elixer]

Is there any chance that it would?

DX12 itself? No way in hell.
DX 12 type features? Yes, with vulkan.

 

[MongGrel]

Is there any chance that it would?

Why would they ?

 

[AnandThenMan]

Won't happen, MS is intent on using DX12 as a value addon to push people to the OS. There is likely little technical reason it can't work under Win8 and 7.

 

[positivedoppler]

Will that would suck...I wonder how much Window's 10 standalone will be.

 

[tweakboy]

NOPE. too bad.... sighs,, jk jk

 

[Red Hawk]

Won't happen, MS is intent on using DX12 as a value addon to push people to the OS. There is likely little technical reason it can't work under Win8 and 7.

I think whether they simply technically can or can't isn't the relevant question, here. Even if they ultimately could backport DX12, that doesn't mean it would be technically easy to do. Like I said, DirectX is closely tied to the Windows Display Driver Model, an integral part of the Windows OS. Backporting DX12 would involve gutting some of Windows 7 so you could make WDDM 2.0 work with it. Ultimately possible, but potentially very time and resource consuming, to the point where it's not something that Microsoft is interested in developing simply as a free upgrade. They'd rather package that research and development with a whole new operating system.

 

[soccerballtux]

not happy with what's going on in W10 so I'll be staying on 7 till the last minute. Hopefully I'll figure out if UT4/UE4 runs on vulkan by then.

 

[thesmokingman]

Not a chance. Mantle er Vulkan is your only hope. MS even went as far as giving W10 away to push everyone to the same platform.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Not going to happen.

 

[NTMBK]

Just upgrade to Windows 10.

 

[SPBHM]

I would say it's like windows XP and DX10, but in reality Vista had a lot more changes, while I think 7 and 10 are not that different, but I don't see MS doing it, they want you to install win 10 more than they want you to use DX12.

still XP had access to most DX10/11 features with OpenGL, is just that nobody used it, probably the same is going to happen with Vulkan/Mantle and 7... so yes, for gaming you should upgrade to Win10... good thing is that is a free upgrade for now.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Windows 7 mainstream support has already ended.

If there was to be any hope it would be Windows 8.1.

Its perhaps worth noticing that Windows 8.1 support ends in 2018 and Windows 10 in 2020.

 

[DustinBrowder]

No chance at all. But I wouldn't rush to upgrade to windows 10 anyways, since it will be at least one year before games start taking advantage of DX12 and at least 2 years before most games start applying DX12.

As of right now I'd avoid win10 like the plague as its a privacy nightmare. Check out my signature for more info.

Windows 7 mainstream support has already ended.

If there was to be any hope it would be Windows 8.1.

Its perhaps worth noticing that Windows 8.1 support ends in 2018 and Windows 10 in 2020.

False! Win 7 supports ends in 2020, win 8 support ends at 2022 and win10 support at least until 2025.

 

[Techhog]

False! Win 7 supports ends in 2020, win 8 support ends at 2022 and win10 support at least until 2025.

He said mainstream support. The dates you listed are for extended support. Once mainstream support ends, new features aren't added. (Granted, MS made an exception there and added some of the telemetry in Windows 10 to it.)

 

[NTMBK]

I would say it's like windows XP and DX10, but in reality Vista had a lot more changes, while I think 7 and 10 are not that different

They introduced a completely new driver model, WDDM2.0, which has impact throughout the OS. The last time they made such a big change with WDDM1.0, which came out with Vista... so yeah, it's pretty similar to the XP->Vista jump.

 

[ShintaiDK]

He said mainstream support. The dates you listed are for extended support. Once mainstream support ends, new features aren't added. (Granted, MS made an exception there and added some of the telemetry in Windows 10 to it.)

Exactly. Besides security patches Windows 7 is dropped.

 

[SPBHM]

They introduced a completely new driver model, WDDM2.0, which has impact throughout the OS. The last time they made such a big change with WDDM1.0, which came out with Vista... so yeah, it's pretty similar to the XP->Vista jump.

well, WDDM 1.0 drivers are compatible with win10, XP drivers were not with Vista I think, in any case, it's been a while since 7, so yes, quite a few changes were made I suppose,

 

[PrincessFrosty]

It's my understanding that DX12 has dependencies such as a revised driver model which allows the lower level access to the hardware which is part of the more optimised API, it's very much like the DX9 to DX10 issue, many people thought that DX10 on Vista only was MS artifically limiting XP but the fact is that there's too many OS components that the newer DX depends on to realistically port it back, I think the same is reasonably true for Win8 to Win10.

 

[tweakboy]

NOPE. Also chill theres no D12 games out yet,,,,, UT4 engine will pown all engines.

 

[DustinBrowder]

He said mainstream support. The dates you listed are for extended support. Once mainstream support ends, new features aren't added. (Granted, MS made an exception there and added some of the telemetry in Windows 10 to it.)

Yeah, but its still patched. And even if it wasn't still patched it wouldn't make a difference. Media likes to spew bullshit about vulnerability, but that is complete bull, no one would target an OS like XP these days because most of the users are using win7.

Why write malware for XP for for 15% of users when win7 has 60%+ of the users?

This is why mac OS is "safer" because who would bother to create malware for less than 2% of users?

 

[RampantAndroid]

Yeah, but its still patched. And even if it wasn't still patched it wouldn't make a difference. Media likes to spew bullshit about vulnerability, but that is complete bull, no one would target an OS like XP these days because most of the users are using win7.

Why write malware for XP for for 15% of users when win7 has 60%+ of the users?

This is why mac OS is "safer" because who would bother to create malware for less than 2% of users?

I don't agree. There's still enough people on XP, and you target the lowest hanging fruit...

 

[mikeymikec]

15% of computer users worldwide is still an awfully large number.

Also, considering that many vulnerabilities affect many versions of Windows, who's to say that one would need to specifically target a particular version? For example, the latest IE vulnerability that MS is sending out a patch for (outside of its usual monthly patch cycle) affects IE 7-11 so it's not much of an imagination stretch for it to affect v6 as well. Most computer users are admins on their own PC so it's just a case of getting one's foot in the door in exploit terms.

Most of the vulnerabilities that are posted on MS's bulletin mailing list (from what I've seen) tend to affect many versions of their software, it's pretty unusual for a vuln not to also affect the latest version.

 

[XiandreX]

Not going to happen.

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