- Jun 2, 2012
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Hey guys, sorry for the noob question but I am really confused as to what the max version of DirectX 11 I can support is?
Windows 7 x64
7950 Boost 3GB
???
Windows 7 x64
7950 Boost 3GB
???
Direct3D 11. Feature level 11_0.
DirectX 11.1 for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1:
Platform Update for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 (KB2670838)
Portions of the “DirectX 11.1 Runtime” are being made available on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 via the Platform Update for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (KB 2670838)
Which brings up a great opportunity for a story regarding that from Max McMullen, the current development lead for D3D.The platform update is not fully DX11.1. Its only partial.
If the goal is to describe which API methods function fully I could further throw another complicating factor by considering OS version and WDDM version. A classic example of this is the Direct3D 11.1 API Platform Update for Windows 7, where my team brought the 11.1 API from Windows 8 back to Windows 7. There was a lot of negative press about the 11.1 hardware features not being supported on Windows 7 in that platform update, along with a significant amount of speculation in the press that the hardware features were turned off to create a need to upgrade to Windows 8. The actual truth is my team engineered the platform update to have full support for the hardware features in feature level 11.1. Exposing those hardware features requires the runtime query a new WDDM version and function table from the user mode drivers. When my team went into testing for the platform update, a significant number of hybrid laptop drivers and unsupported wrapper drivers for things like USB displays behaved erratically when a new driver version was queried. After months of ordering more laptops and devices to test, I eventually pulled the plug on querying a new WDDM version to resolve the remaining driver compatibility issues. The cost was too great for the features being added. Even if my team managed to keep the driver query intact, some APIs like EnqueueSetEvent on DXGI wouldn't work without an update to the kernel or a change in design for Windows 7. Such APIs were left disabled in the platform update based on "bang for buck" of dev effort.
That's a good insider snippet from Microsoft. One can certainly bash them about Metro, but not about DirectX being locked to "force" Windows upgrades.
The tight coupling to WDDM (by design) means back-porting to older Windows platforms is non-trivial given kernel and/or platform changes are often required.
One reason is for the Windows GUI rendering. DWM is essentially a full-screen hardware accelerated Direct3D application.My understanding of this is very limited, but I don't get why Microsoft does it like that.
These APIs do not perform underlying OS functions or integrate into the kernel.Both OpenGL 4.4 and Mantle work on older versions of Windows, and can expose more than DX11.x does.
So far it's looking like DX12 will be coupled to WDDM 2.0.I get that DX11.x already is tied to WDDM, but Microsoft could make DX12 work in the same way as OpenGL and Mantle.
And you do.
What's your main concern over this? There should be none.
You GPU is fully DX11.2 hw compliant,
with 1 or 2 sw thingies missing due to AMD not implementing it in their driver.
Your GPU has identical DX feature list as AMD newest GPU R9 290/X/285
They said it will have DX12 support, unlike HD6000