Microsoft Brings DirectX 12 To Windows 7 (anandtech.com) 119
Microsoft has announced a form of DirectX 12 that will support Windows 7. "Now before you get too excited, this is currently only enabled for World of Warcraft; and indeed it's not slated to be a general-purpose solution like DX12 on Win10," reports AnandTech. "Instead, Microsoft has stated that they are working with a few other developers to bring their DX12 games/backends to Windows 7 as well. As a consumer it's great to see them supporting their product ten years after it launched, but with the entire OS being put out to pasture in nine months, it seems like an odd time to be dedicating resources to bringing it new features." From the report: For some background, Microsoft's latest DirectX API was created to remove some of the CPU bottlenecks for gaming by allowing for developers to use low-level programming conventions to shift some of the pressure points away from the CPU. This was a response to single-threaded CPU performance plateauing, making complex graphical workloads increasingly CPU-bounded. There's many advantages to using this API over traditional DX11, especially for threading and draw calls. But, Microsoft made the decision long ago to only support DirectX 12 on Windows 10, with its WDDM 2.0 driver stack.
Today's announcement is a pretty big surprise on a number of levels. If Microsoft had wanted to back-port DX12 to Windows 7, you would have thought they'd have done it before Windows 7 entered its long-term servicing state. As it is, even free security patches for Windows 7 are set to end on January 14, 2020, which is well under a year away, and the company is actively trying to migrate users to Windows 10 to avoid having a huge swath of machines sitting in an unpatched state. In fact, they are about to add a pop-up notification to Windows 7 to let users know that they are running out of support very soon. So adding a big feature like DX12 now not only risks undermining their own efforts to migrate people away from Windows 7, but also adding a new feature well after Windows 7 entered long-term support. It's just bizarre.
Today's announcement is a pretty big surprise on a number of levels. If Microsoft had wanted to back-port DX12 to Windows 7, you would have thought they'd have done it before Windows 7 entered its long-term servicing state. As it is, even free security patches for Windows 7 are set to end on January 14, 2020, which is well under a year away, and the company is actively trying to migrate users to Windows 10 to avoid having a huge swath of machines sitting in an unpatched state. In fact, they are about to add a pop-up notification to Windows 7 to let users know that they are running out of support very soon. So adding a big feature like DX12 now not only risks undermining their own efforts to migrate people away from Windows 7, but also adding a new feature well after Windows 7 entered long-term support. It's just bizarre.
Embedded Nag (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems like a great way to get people to install a patch that includes a nag screen. Just attach something of value to it!
I distinctly remember MS saying it was impossible for win 7 to get any newer DX versions because of the infrastructure in win 10 they said allows those new versions of DX to function.
Weird, almost like they were lying?
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Software is not: the copyrighted bit is the source, not the non-expressive object code. So if you think to pretend this is a slipper slope problem, then think again. And, no the execution of the code is a PERFORMANCE, not the fixed-in-medium expression required for copyrights.
A performance by WHOM?
It is MY computer running the compiled code.
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I distinctly remember MS saying it was impossible for win 7 to get any newer DX versions because of the infrastructure in win 10 they said allows those new versions of DX to function.
I believe you might be thinking of XP/2003 and DirectX10; changes made to the DRM Engine (excuse me; kernel) and audiio subsystem in NT 6.x precluded running DX10 on anything earlier.
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I just watched a video about how MS embraces a tech (buys the company), extends it with proprietary "standards" and then kills the market.
Soooo.....what I think:
- developers will completely convert to DX12-only (#1 goal)
- W7 DX12 will end-up buggy
- fixes will be delayed until EOL (and aborted at that time)
In other words, what I fear: new games will no longer run under W7.
World of fucking warcraft? (Score:1)
Still even exists?
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Doesn't Directx 12 already work on Linux, thanks to Valve?
If you want to play WoW, and you don't want Windows 10, then Linux has got you covered.
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Yep, for a while now: https://www.winehq.org/news/20... [winehq.org]
Re: World of fucking warcraft? (Score:1)
Microsoft knows that an enormous amount of their userbase refuse to ever use Spyware 10 and they are terrified that those users and game developers are going to use Vulkan instead. That's why they are back pedalling and doing something they claimed was impossible.
Microsoft always lie and use.
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Microsoft knows that an enormous amount of their userbase refuse to ever use Spyware 10 and they are terrified that those users and game developers are going to use Vulkan instead.
Also, it could push some to switch OS entirely to Mac or linux.
Maybe it's nothing, but I wouldn't be shocked to hear MS announce they'll extend Win7 support further, given all the negatives and potential damage to MS at stake, particularly when MS hasn't exactly been doing stellar in relation to past performance pretty much across the board in recent years.
A lot of people use Win7 so they're not going to be thrilled when MS pulls the plug with only Win10 as an option from MS. Many will be looking to leave t
Re: World of fucking warcraft? (Score:1)
It's not WoW that has pull - its long past the mmo dieback stage. It's Blizzard (or it's occupied remnants at least) itself. WoW despite being fallen, Starcraft, Diablo even for phones, SJWatch, et cetera.
In these degenerate days when studios have turned into and turned out pure shit, Blizzard is still the player in the industry.
So, yes, they can get Microsoft to hackport dx12 into Winders 7 for the ten people still playing World of Snorecraft on a PC from 1962.
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I am one of those people playing World of Snorecraft on a (bit newer than a) 1962 Windows 7 PC...
It already plays well on my 5760x1080 aggregated monitors but I certainly wouldn't mind the additional love.
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Except older computers could run win 10 if it wasted fewer resources on telemetry and other things many people do not want...My computer is 10 years old running win 7 and working just fine. I have no interest in win 10 for a number of reasons...maybe microsoft should be required to maintain security patching of older OS's for a longer time. To use a car analogy car manufacturers are required to provide parts for all models for 30 years. Why should microsoft get to just stop when they don't want to do it
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Games? That should be time for a new computer.
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Shop around and configure a new Windows 10 ready laptop.
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Take that cost developers have to spend on an old OS and make the new OS better.
China where WOW and windows 7 is big they want (Score:2)
China where WOW and windows 7 is big they want that market
Designed to Break? (Score:3)
M$ has a pretty bad reputation at end of cycle, breaking programs, blocking use of documents with the next version, doing all sorts of crap. DX12 run on windows 7 at your risk, you can bet when it break all over the place, M$ will say but windows 7 is no longer supported.
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MS has done a lot of shit, but "Documents" have been incredibly backwards compatible and you're more than able to open up Word 97 or even old Word perfect documents in any modern version of word, a capability they AFAIK they have never broken.
Now backwards compatibility is a problem, but hey advancement always is. You can't expect old anything to be able to seamlessly read new anything.
So you're going to have to come up with something better than that. MS has a lot to answer for, but breaking compatibility
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"Word Binary Format 6" is hard-blocked from opening in all recent versions of office.
Can't recall how those got created, but it comes up from time to time.
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Word Binary Format 6 didn't even come out until 2015, so I'm guessing you are trying to open it in an older version of word that doesn't understand it.
MS must think win7 will still be around for long (Score:2)
Otherwise, why go to all that trouble?
Re:MS must think win7 will still be around for lon (Score:5, Funny)
They probably found out, that their new Nag-Popup needs DirectX 12 to work.
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Makes complete sense to me. Things are really messed up in the consumer desktop space...
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Wish I had mod points.
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They're charging for updates past January 14th, 2020. So after that you have to pay by the year for updates. I think they did this because it's either buy Windows 10 or buy security patches for Windows 7 i.e they earn money either way so let's just throw them a bone to make us earn more money.
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Running a "modern" version of Window on an older computer will make the computer run like crap.
But as Microsoft needs to keep the game creators and users happy, old computers/OS's need newer DirectX versions
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I disagree with this. Remember the performance hit of Windows Vista? It was huge. It was the number one reason people hated it. However, all versions of Windows after Vista, seemed to run faster on the same hardware. Windows 7 was basically called "Windows Vista fixed" or "done right", and the success of Windows 7 was huge. Now around 2012, Microsoft came up with Windows 8, and one of the claims why you should
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And linux doesn't even support NTFS 3.0 which is 20 years old (Yes, you can install a 3rd party driver like NTFS-3G, which will get you most of the way there), but you can install ext2 drivers in windows too, lol.
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A lot of laptop type PCs come with custom software and drivers that allow people to use all the little peripheral features that come with the machine.
And while Vista stuff is mostly compatible with Windows 7, a lot of the Windows Vista and 7 stuff is not compatible with Windows 10. So unsuspecting customers start their free Windows 10 upgrade and it is breaking shit all over the place. A lot of those little features they've gotten used to won't work any longer.
Un
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What about Windows 8, that's what I have. It's still got plenty of time left for support. This is maybe Microsoft's way of saying "maybe we could support you, but we won't because we hate you."
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What about Windows 8, that's what I have. It's still got plenty of time left for support. This is maybe Microsoft's way of saying "maybe we could support you, but we won't because we hate you."
Just business [statcounter.com], Win10 is 55%, Win7 34%, Win8+8.1 9% and 2.5% still run XP/Vista. Still I wonder why the heck Microsoft would bother in their final year of support, it's either a trap to make it buggy and force people to Win10 or they're having cold feet and is considering a "Windows Classic" version? I mean 34% still prefer your ten year old OS and you even tried to give them a "free" upgrade? It's pretty clear the market thinks Win7 works just fine...
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It's just for one single game, and it's not a full DX12 just an emulation layer and there are no performance or graphics improvements. Thus, Blizzard could decide to make World of Warcraft only use DX12 and drop DX11 support, possibly it makes life easier for those game developers. But still no actual benefit to World of Warcraft players in any way. That might be a dumb move though as a game that size is making a lot of money from long term customers probably still using DX9 on lower end computers. Sure, Mi
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Of course, that's helped by Microsoft themselves making a series of stupid changes in newer Windows versions
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I don't know about your references, but I will take your word for it. What's really surprising is that this 25% number, if it's true, coming from Steam!! The PC games company! Why is this interesting? Because this is a statistic pertaining to the consumer PC user community, not corporate/government. It is well known that organizations are very slow to upgrade the OS because they're
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Re:Only WoW? (Score:5, Interesting)
I refer you to Win32s and WinG, as well as several components of Games for Windows Live.
If you're not familiar with those, they were all released by MIcrosoft, but not part of the core OS, but required to run a multitude of bits of software, never quite elevating the underlying system to the realms of full compatibility across the board but just bodging it enough that some "big money" software developer could bribe Microsoft into expanding their market a little, temporarily.
GfW Live, for example, worked fine on XP for many years. Then it stopped. Then it worked fine on 7 for many years. Then there were problems. All to do with underlying technology upgrades, (e.g. .NET Framework, etc.) that it was reliant on, but yet never quite pushing you out (I got Toy Soldiers on Steam to continue to run on XP with GfW Live by dropping in some DLLs available from the Microsoft site, but it was far from easy - if you were a casual user it was basically impossible after a certain period of time as GfW Live demanded things that only Windows 7 actually had).
This is going to be a "mini-DX12" to literally run WoW because WoW have asked for it. That's it. No different to how Microsoft never actually shipped a proper OpenGL DLL for many years.
Microsoft won't give you full DX12, even though it's perfectly viable, because they know you then won't upgrade past 7 for another few years. What they'll do is throw you a bone, because WoW are basically paying them to, that'll work for a small subset of programs. It'll work for a couple of years but not for enough to keep you "DX12 compatible" in any significant way.
This is the biggest problem with Microsoft.... planned obsolescence and pretending to give a damn.
Thankful (Score:1)
In fact, they are about to add a pop-up notification to Windows 7 to let users know that they are running out of support very soon.
Thankfully I disabled MS updates years ago to prevent Install Windows10' pop-ups. I dodged two bullets!
You know the old addage (Score:2)
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes
aka
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts
Just 5 years late... (Score:1)
Really, Microsnot just decided to ignore the Windows 7 user for a bunch of years hoping that they would upgrade, or buy computer with Win10.
It is NOT newsworthy that it happened... and unfortunately, it's not even newsworthy any-more that Microsnot doesn't give a crap about their customers.
Win 10 Sales (Score:3, Insightful)
DX12 was never difficult to bring to Windows 7. The sole reason it was only released to Windows 10 was to drive adoption of Win 10.
A few takeaways are: (Score:4, Insightful)
Having said that there's a major problem with this update mechanism: OEMs will eventually stop releasing up to date drivers for new Windows 10 releases and you'll end up with a Windows 10 PC/laptop where some piece of your equipment no longer works.
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Microsoft doesn't do that because Windows 10 gives them so much power over your PC and your data.
Sorry but no. MS doesn't do that because it doesn't make any sense at all. They don't do it now, they didn't do it in the past when Windows wasn't spying on your data, and if anything one of the few things they have back ported is precisely the things that give them the power.
MS (and other companies) don't do this because it's a colossal waste of time supporting and enhancing old software when you could instead bring people to the latest version. Even the Linux kernel eventually drops support for things eve
All hands on deck! (Score:2)
Certainly sounds like the left hand not talking to the right hand sort of thing.
Some department that was dedicated to making this happen just quietly working away oblivious (or not given layoffs) to the fact that they are producing something that probably shouldn't be produced at all, and the resources better spent elsewhere...