And since Windows XP support ends next month, it won't get the new DirectX 12 as well. Microsoft failed to address several important information about the new version of DirectX 12.įor instance, will it only be available for systems running Windows 8 and newer, or will it also be made available to users of Windows 7? It is very likely that Windows Vista is out of the picture here, considering that the operating system did not even receive DirectX 11.1 or DirectX 11.2. While developers are the main target, it is also of interest to gamers that use Microsoft products. This is all very technical, and if you are interested in those information, I suggest you visit the blog post linked above to find out more about it. This performance boost is accomplished by API improvements, especially in the three key areas pipeline state objects, command lists and bundles, and resource access. To demonstrate the capabilities of DirectX 12, Microsoft has run the benchmark 3DMark both on Direct3D 11 and Direct3D 12 to visualize performance improvements.Īccording to the development team, DirectX 12 offers optimized multi-thread scaling and a 50% better cpu utilization (running 3D Mark benchmarks, which is different from real-world applications).

The announcement concentrates on the Direct3D component and its new capabilities and features, and does not provide information about other components of interest, such as Direct2D or DirectCompute. Microsoft announced DirectX 12 yesterday on the DirectX Developer Blog.

Depending on which Windows version you use, you may run DirectX 9.0c if you are running Windows XP, DirectX 10 or 11 if you are running Vista or Windows 7, DirectX 11.1 if you are running Windows 7 o Windows 8, or DirectX 11.2 if you are running Windows 8.1.

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