DX12 comes to Windows 7

[BFG10K]

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/di...arcraft-uses-directx-12-running-on-windows-7/

It's not the full implementation and will only work for specific games, sort of like "Mini-GL" back in the day. But it's still very surprising.

DX12 in general is an absolute failure, and this is an unusual move given Windows 7 support is ending soon.

By some metrics Windows 7 still has a bigger market share than Windows 10. My hope from this is that support will be extended.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Cliffs: some DX12 libraries will be bundled with high-profile games, to allow using the user-mode DX12 runtime on Windows 7.

NO WINDOWS 7 DIRECTX 12 REDISTRIBUTABLE WILL BE CREATED.

It's a developer library, not an end-user tool or upgrade.

Edit: BFG, please fix the title of this thread, the titles as it stands now is incorrect, there is NO redistributable DirectX 12 libary coming to Windows 7, nor any of the kernel-mode improvements. Just a user-mode libary to make it easier for developers to run games designed for DirectX 12 on Windows 7.

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

So basically D3D12 with WDDM 1.1 limitations just like D3D11.1 with WDDM 1.1 limitations ...

One big killer use case of WDDM 2.x was it's ability to do context monitoring between different GPU engines allowing for async compute in D3D12. WDDM 2.x changes to driver residency also allowed D3D12 to do bindless ...

Likewise, logical operations were only available on WDDM 1.2 (Windows 8) and could not be back ported to WDDM 1.1 (Windows 7) so I can only imagine many other new features that appeared with D3D12 in Windows 10 will be gone. There shall be no shader model 6.x to exploit wave level intrinsics so from here on out it's pure shader model 5.0 (not even 5.1) ...

 

[Fanatical Meat]

All I know is every, single, game I try to run in DX12 runs slower and crappier than it does in DX11.
DX12 is a huge disappointment.

 

[RaV666]

All I know is every, single, game I try to run in DX12 runs slower and crappier than it does in DX11.
DX12 is a huge disappointment.

Thats probably why ms decided to do this, to give devs a push so that they can do only dx12 for both w10 and w7, less work.And because there is no redistributable, once they hop on the dx12 train, ms stops this program so new games will work only on 10.Its kinda drug dealer kinda thing.

 

[SPBHM]

well, they could use Vulkan, that also works in Windows 7 (I wonder if this one factor why MS is doing this....)

but... an interesting move, specially so late, but WoW is huge and probably a lot of people are playing it on Windows 7.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Solid Meh.

Like everything else the improvements in graphical fidelity in DX levels is getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time goes on. 7 to 9 was huge, 9 to 11 was less huge. 11/12 are really more back end modifications to improve overhead and extract more performance to cram more stuff on screen.

I know DXR is in there somewhere but like the much ballyhooed tessellation, just not seeing a killer app on that front yet.

 

[Carfax83]

All I know is every, single, game I try to run in DX12 runs slower and crappier than it does in DX11.
DX12 is a huge disappointment.

It really depends on the game and the engine. The reason for this I believe is because most 3D engines are fundamentally programmed in a serial manner, so to fully utilize an explicitly parallel renderer like DX12, large code sections need to be rewritten or overhauled. And that takes some time and skill I believe. Games like the Division 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Sniper Elite 4 and a fair amount of others all run better in DX12 than they do in DX11. And of course, a lot of the Windows Store games are DX12 only, and they tend to be excellent performers as well.

The next generation of 3D engines is where we'll see the greatest leaps in parallelization though, or so I believe. We're already seeing it to some extent already, with games like Wolfenstein TNC being Vulkan only and having no OpenGL fallback path. Doom Eternal which will use IdTech 7 was said by the developers to be much more parallel than IdTech 6 which was used for the Doom 2016 reboot.

 

[PingSpike]

Super weird to have this happening now of all times. All I can think is some big name developers said they were switching to Vulkan renders and MS finally started getting scared so they took steps to get them back on the MS path. But its so late in the game it would have diminished effectiveness significantly.

But they also just announced the new Chromium Edge will be available on Windows 7 so maybe they're throwing in the towel on Windows 10 only for the immediate future. I personally think making these things Windows 10 only hurt their adoption rather than driving "synergies" like they wanted.

 

[amenx]

Good timing. Just when 7 will also face a deluge of nag messages to upgrade to 10.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I don't get all the windows 10 hate, works great for me.
I understand the spying concerns but you better not use an iPad, any android tablet, any android phone, any iPhone if you are worried about privacy.

 

[amenx]

Where is the hate for 10? Win 7 was awesome back in its time, but is now obsolete as far as I am concerned. Spying, shmying.. only simpletons are concerned with that. 10 as far as I am conerned is the only relevant OS for PC today.

 

[BFG10K]

I don't get all the windows 10 hate, works great for me.

"Turning your PC into a locked down cell-phone appliance, with a garbage UI" is the best way to describe it.

I understand the spying concerns but you better not use an iPad, any android tablet, any android phone, any iPhone if you are worried about privacy.

I don't. I use an Alcatel button-phone which has no app store. The battery lasts a week on one charge, too.

 

[mohit9206]

All I know is every, single, game I try to run in DX12 runs slower and crappier than it does in DX11.
DX12 is a huge disappointment.

Wow i mean how much hype was around DX12 initially? Low overhead, more efficient, better performance, etc. What happened to all that?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wow i mean how much hype was around DX12 initially? Low overhead, more efficient, better performance, etc. What happened to all that?

Maybe so, but you forgot "more work for overworked, under-paid developers".

 

[mohit9206]

Maybe so, but you forgot "more work for overworked, under-paid developers".

That could also be said for Raytracing.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Maybe so, but you forgot "more work for overworked, under-paid developers".

There was an article about how to-the-metal programming wasn't exactly the greatest idea. It could have been just his point of view, but it seemed to make sense.

I think it was more to try to compete with consoles. But you can't compare with consoles because the platform doesn't change for several years and comes in one variant while with PCs you have to deal anywhere from a $300 laptop to a $5000 bleeding edge gamer PC. Of course when nothing changes eventually you find a better way to do things.

But no matter how much optimization consoles get, it can't rival a PC that costs several times more. Of course consoles perform very admirably for the hardware because of the stable platform.

It just goes to show you really can't get anything for free.

 

[Jism]

I don't get all the windows 10 hate, works great for me.
I understand the spying concerns but you better not use an iPad, any android tablet, any android phone, any iPhone if you are worried about privacy.

I think the Iphone is a very privacy oriented phone. It just depends on how you set it up. Andriod is a different thing.

Apart from that: they all said DX12 would never come to W7, and all of a sudden they can cook something up to make a DX12 path run on W7 just fine. I recently switched over from W7 to W10 but what i hate the most is:

- Privacy evading shit
- Pushed, breaking updates
- Desktop icons not saving properly after reboot
- Alt-Tab does'nt function correctly, i alt tab to the window i want, let go, it does'nt even spawn the window untill i hit alt-tab again. Who in their mind designed this?

I disabled everything related to privacy, disabled everything related to updates, installed trend micro and called it a day here.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Alt-Tab does'nt function correctly, i alt tab to the window i want, let go, it does'nt even spawn the window untill i hit alt-tab again. Who in their mind designed this?

That's ... rather weird. Never had that happen here. (Been using Win10 for several years now.)

 

[Guru]

All I know is every, single, game I try to run in DX12 runs slower and crappier than it does in DX11.
DX12 is a huge disappointment.

That is not DX12 fault, its Microsoft's and developers faults. Devs don't want to develop only for DX12, why do that when Win7 is still about 50% of marketshare, that is a ton of gamers still on win7.

So devs create a DX11 games in their DX11 engines and then tack on DX12 on top of it in order to gain some additional free marketing due to the fact.

In games where its actually a proper implementation, DX12 is much faster than DX11.

 

[SPBHM]

perhaps it's unrelated but a few days after this, Google announced Stadia, in which all games will run with Vulkan on Linux,
if most big budget games are going to be on Stadia (I would think so, Google is very much treating it like another "console"), and using Vulkan perhaps we will start to see lots of games using Vulkan also on Windows, and Vulkan works on Win7, 8, 10 and Linux, so I wonder if this move by MS had something to do with it, trying to increase the potential userbase of DX12...

maybe not since it's so limited... but... interesting times ahead for the APIs I think.

That is not DX12 fault, its Microsoft's and developers faults. Devs don't want to develop only for DX12, why do that when Win7 is still about 50% of marketshare, that is a ton of gamers still on win7.

So devs create a DX11 games in their DX11 engines and then tack on DX12 on top of it in order to gain some additional free marketing due to the fact.

In games where its actually a proper implementation, DX12 is much faster than DX11.

I've played Shadow of the Tomb Raider recently and was surprised by how good their DX12 support is compared to DX11 now, their previous game had a DX12 patch in 2016 but it wasn't all that great, developers are certainly getting better at using DX12 I think, and with the next gen of consoles approaching, ray tracing and whatnot, DX12 (and perhaps Vulkan) should become even more relevant.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

That is not DX12 fault, its Microsoft's and developers faults. Devs don't want to develop only for DX12, why do that when Win7 is still about 50% of marketshare, that is a ton of gamers still on win7.

So devs create a DX11 games in their DX11 engines and then tack on DX12 on top of it in order to gain some additional free marketing due to the fact.

In games where its actually a proper implementation, DX12 is much faster than DX11.

Doesn’t change the point that the vast majority (nearly all) games that I have tried run better under dx11 than dx12.
I don’t care whose fault it is.

 

[coercitiv]

I don’t care whose fault it is.

Actually you do, otherwise you wouldn't be pointing fingers and using "huge disappointment" as an euphemism for "mediocre performance".

If you care enough to call DX12 a huge disappointment, you care enough to listen to what caused it to fall bellow expectations.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Actually you do, otherwise you wouldn't be pointing fingers and using "huge disappointment" as an euphemism for "mediocre performance".

If you care enough to call DX12 a huge disappointment, you care enough to listen to what caused it to fall bellow expectations.

No that doesn’t change that it was over hyped and under performs.
Fact is dx12 performs worse for every game I have tried using it with.
This isn’t P&N so I’ll stop here.

 

[Guru]

Doesn’t change the point that the vast majority (nearly all) games that I have tried run better under dx11 than dx12.
I don’t care whose fault it is.

You haven't tried BF5, Metro Exodus, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the Division and few others. The only proper implementations have been done by Microsoft and their games, but there is no DX11 mode on those games to compare it.

Again performance has nothing to do with DX12 itself, but with the implementation. DX12 is much more advanced and better than DX11 if used properly.