Monday, July 3rd 2017
NVIDIA Adds DirectX 12 Support to GeForce "Fermi" Architecture
With its latest GeForce 384 series graphics drivers, NVIDIA quietly added DirectX 12 API support for GPUs based on its "Fermi" architecture, as discovered by keen-eyed users on the Guru3D Forums. These include the GeForce 400-series and 500-series graphics cards. The support appears to be sufficient to run today's Direct3D feature-level 12_0 games or applications, and completes WDDM 2.2 compliance for GeForce "Fermi" graphics cards on Windows 10 Creators Update (version 1703), which could be NVIDIA's motivation for extending DirectX 12 support to these 5+ year old chips. Whether they meet your games' minimum system requirements is an entirely different matter.
Source:
Guru3D Forums
58 Comments on NVIDIA Adds DirectX 12 Support to GeForce "Fermi" Architecture
DX9 runs fine on Fermi, but Radeons HD 5xx0/6xx0 have better perf/wat ratio for DX9 games.
You didn't ran DX10 games in Vista because games were not there (most supported DX9 and had DX10 patch on top), and when native DX10 finally showed up, we already had Windows 7 with DX11 support. Here's a list of DX10 games : LINK.
You don't need Windows Store to get DirectX 12 support (see 3DMark Time Spy).
Fetature Level 12_x of DirectX 12 will get utilised... someday, in few years.
But right now, you don't need it to run DX12 only titles. Fermi has DirectX 12 FL_11.0 support now, and it runs DX12 titles (like Gears of War 4), so... what's your problem ?