Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Graphics Microsoft Operating Systems Software Windows Entertainment Games

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.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Microsoft Brings DirectX 12 To Windows 7

Comments Filter:
  • Embedded Nag (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @07:56PM (#58265040)

    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?

    • 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.

    • by mathew7 ( 863867 )

      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.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Still even exists?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      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.

      • Yep, for a while now: https://www.winehq.org/news/20... [winehq.org]

      • by Anonymous Coward

        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.

        • 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

  • by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @08:30PM (#58265170) Homepage

    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.

    • 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

      • by Wulf2k ( 4703573 )

        "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.

        • 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.

  • Otherwise, why go to all that trouble?

    • by aix tom ( 902140 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @08:49PM (#58265252)

      They probably found out, that their new Nag-Popup needs DirectX 12 to work.

    • 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.

    • There is a large portion of the world who don't have the money to upgrade their computers every-time a new Windows version is released.

      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
      • Running a "modern" version of Window on an older computer will make the computer run like crap.

        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
        • by Anonymous Coward
          I assume you're talking about desktop PCs?
          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
    • 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."

      • by Kjella ( 173770 )

        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...

        • 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

    • According to Steam hardware survey 25% of people are still using Windows 7 which is a pretty high number for an OS that old.
      Of course, that's helped by Microsoft themselves making a series of stupid changes in newer Windows versions
      • According to Steam hardware survey 25% of people are still using Windows 7 which is a pretty high number for an OS that old.

        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
        • Most older games (pre-2018) simply runs better on Windows 7 than Windows 10.
        • Yeah, very likely Win 7 has a higher penetration in corporate settings and non-gaming home users. Also take into account that Win 7 users got the option of updating to 10 for free.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Anonymous Coward

    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!

  • Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes

    aka

    Beware of Greeks bearing gifts

  • According to Wikipedia "DirectX 12 was announced by Microsoft at GDC on March 20, 2014".

    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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12, 2019 @11:03PM (#58265606)

    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.

  • by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2019 @06:50AM (#58266424) Homepage
    • Microsoft can support Windows 7 for as long as they want.
    • Microsoft can relatively easily backport pretty much every underlying technology from Windows 10 to Windows 7.
    • Microsoft doesn't do that because Windows 10 gives them so much power over your PC and your data. Also, the way updates are implemented in Windows 10, Microsoft can forcefully keep every Windows 10 user on the latest release of the OS which is ultimately good for them.

    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.

    • 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

  • 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...

Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. -- Norman Augustine

Working...