DirectX 12 Makes Windows 7 Debut With Latest World of Warcraft Patch

[crazyeyesreaper]

In what is likely to create a good deal of controversy along with a few cheers, Blizzard will be adding DirectX 12 support to World of Warcraft on Windows 7 thanks to a bit of effort from Microsoft. You might be wondering how that is possible? Well after seeing massive performance gains in WoW when Blizzard released their DirectX 12 update for Windows 10 in late 2018, resulted in the company wanting to bring those performance improvements to gamers still holding out on Windows 7. To facilitate this, they began talking with Microsoft who after getting a great deal of feedback from Blizzard decided to act on it. To achieve this Microsoft decided to port the user mode D3D12 runtime to Windows 7, which will unblock developers, thereby allows them to take advantage of the latest improvements that the DirectX 12 API offers while still giving full support to customers on older operating systems.

For now, World of Warcraft is the first game to run in DirectX 12 on Windows 7 with the latest 8.1.5 patch. However, they will not be the last as more developers are working on porting DirectX 12 games to Windows 7 with more announcements to follow. Microsoft, of course, has taken it upon themselves to remind everyone that the best possible performance with DirectX 12 will still be had on Windows 10 due to numerous OS optimizations. How true this is remains to be seen, but for many curmudgeons still holding out on Windows 7, this will likely be seen as a form of vindication for sticking with the now venerable OS.


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[cucker tarlson]

I jumped on the w10 wagon in 2017 thinking it'll soon get better than dx12.
Nope.

still any game that I own and runs dx11/12 does so better on dx11 or the same on both apis.

edit: actually rotr does a lot better on dx12 in cpu heavy geothermal valley,I stand corrected.That's one game tho.

 

[natr0n]

WoW addicts actually did something that could benefit us all for once.

 

[64K]

I'm pretty impressed with MS lately. First the Master Chief Collection coming to PC and on Steam and now this. It's even more impressive because for a while there MS was intent on getting everyone on Win 10 one way or another and DX12 was one of there lures. I wonder now if MS will extend support for Win 7 beyond Jan of next year.

 

[Zubasa]

I jumped on the w10 wagon in 2017 thinking it'll soon get better than dx12.
Nope.

still any game that I own and runs dx11/12 does so better on dx11 or the same on both apis.

edit: actually rotr does a lot better on dx12 in cpu heavy geothermal valley,I stand corrected.That's one game tho.

Many of the DX12 titles don't even use the DX12 features fully, and that is why you often don't see a difference.
And for companies lik EA, their DX12 mode in BF was a disater, they managed to make it run worse than DX11.

 

[Midland Dog]

no benefit for nvidia users moving on, should have been vulkan

 

[IceShroom]

Microsoft should have supported D3D12 on Windows 7/8.1 from the beganning.

 

[dj-electric]

Forget that stuff, blizz published their classic wow plans for phases and progression!

 

[R0H1T]

Microsoft should have supported D3D12 on Windows 7/8.1 from the beganning.

That's probably technically impossible given the (artificial?) WDDM limitations.

 

[Prima.Vera]

What's next? Microsoft bringing back 3D Sound acceleration for Windows?? Blasphemy!

 

[NC37]

Guess Blizzard forgot there was Vulcan that worked better than DX12 and worked on Win 7.

I keep hearing more devs not wanting to bother with DX12 in favor of Vulcan. All sorts of development issues with DX12. Heck look how long consoles spent in the DX9 era with the 360 only having a slight edge due to having prototype tesselators. Devs got lazy. Took forever to move to 10, then since 11 launched it has taken till 12 before 11's features finally mattered. Not surprising 12 has not been smooth and that Vulcan has been making better progress. Specially because AMD started it with Mantle and then let it loose. It wasn't locked up to an OS and was more open to use. If anything, good job AMD. If you didn't spend time making it, we really indeed would still be on DX11.

 

[Vayra86]

Guess Blizzard forgot there was Vulcan that worked better than DX12 and worked on Win 7.

I keep hearing more devs not wanting to bother with DX12 in favor of Vulcan. All sorts of development issues with DX12. Heck look how long consoles spent in the DX9 era with the 360 only having a slight edge due to having prototype tesselators. Devs got lazy. Took forever to move to 10, then since 11 launched it has taken till 12 before 11's features finally mattered. Not surprising 12 has not been smooth and that Vulcan has been making better progress. Specially because AMD started it with Mantle and then let it loose. It wasn't locked up to an OS and was more open to use. If anything, good job AMD. If you didn't spend time making it, we really indeed would still be on DX11.

Where is all that progress then? There are probably less Vulkan games than there are with DX12 support.

API adoption always moves forward at a snail's pace, development takes years and when you have to go down into the engine on a lower level, that takes even longer. What you are describing isn't lazy devs, no dev willingly chooses lower overall performance unless there are economic reasons, which of course are always there. Time to market, extra dev time to adapt an engine, etc.

 

[Zubasa]

What's next? Microsoft bringing back 3D Sound acceleration for Windows?? Blasphemy!

They kind of did since Windows 8.
TBH bringing back hardware acclerated sound and standardize it properly might not be a bad idea.

 

[Jism]

Oh it's still possible?

They refused to add any at all just to push people over to W10.

 

[kriegalex]

So, they are doing this just less than 1 year before Windows 7 is considered EOL ? Do people really want to run on a OS that is easily hackable by "script kiddies" like it is now for Windows XP ? I hope for them they'll at least have the Blizzard Authenticator and a pretty solid firewall to at least mitigate all this hell to come...

 

[Pruny]

it was the same with Vista and Dx11, they added suport for it later

 

[P4-630]

Well enjoy it till January 14, 2020.....

 

[Wavetrex]

TBH, I would rather like to see a bloat-free Windows 10 version available for consumers

One that when you put the USB stick in and start installing on a new computer, ASK if they should install:
[ ] Cortana
[ ] MS Office
[ ] Live Tiles on Start Menu
[ ] OneDrive
[ ] Junk games
[ ] Telemetry
[ ] Microsoft Store
[ ] X-Box crap and useless Game Bar
[ ] Other junk that usually comes preinstalled with W10 Home.

Let's say that such a version does exists, it's called Windows 10 Enterprise, but the pricing of that is not for mere mortals.

Windows 10 is quite good after you tweak it, disable and remove many of the bloat, but the "default" is annoying as fk to any power user, or even normal users that have used previous versions before, like 7, Vista, XP... Even to them the bloat is unbearable.

No need for DX12 on Windows 7, just a Windows 10 that doesn't suck !

 

[Pruny]

you can use Lite versions from pirates

 

[etayorius]

Is this DX12 for win7 installed through an update or how the hell you get this? considering going back to win7, now that i got no reason to stick with win10.

TBH, I would rather like to see a bloat-free Windows 10 version available for consumers

One that when you put the USB stick in and start installing on a new computer, ASK if they should install:
[ ] Cortana
[ ] MS Office
[ ] Live Tiles on Start Menu
[ ] OneDrive
[ ] Junk games
[ ] Telemetry
[ ] Microsoft Store
[ ] X-Box crap and useless Game Bar
[ ] Other junk that usually comes preinstalled with W10 Home.

Let's say that such a version does exists, it's called Windows 10 Enterprise, but the pricing of that is not for mere mortals.

Windows 10 is quite good after you tweak it, disable and remove many of the bloat, but the "default" is annoying as fk to any power user, or even normal users that have used previous versions before, like 7, Vista, XP... Even to them the bloat is unbearable.

No need for DX12 on Windows 7, just a Windows 10 that doesn't suck !

Or you could just use Windows 10 LTSB or Windows 10 LTSC

 

[lexluthermiester]

That's probably technically impossible given the (artificial?) WDDM limitations.

Myth. There are no such limitations except were artificially implemented deliberately by Microsoft. There are no real reasons why DX12 can't run on Windows 7 or 8.1, just like there was no real reason why DX10/11 couldn't run on XP. In fact, I'd bet real money DX12 could run on XP with the right supporting code libraries included in.

Or you could just use Windows 10 LTSB or Windows 10 LTSC

This is my current go-to version of 10.

 

[jabbadap]

So if 4A games wants, they could make Metro Exodus "RTX on" on win7, or?

 

[chaosmassive]

Microsoft should have supported D3D12 on Windows 7/8.1 from the beganning.

HELL NAW, it will make windows 7 even harder to kill than it already is,
M$ need faster and more users migration to windows 10 and DX 12 needed as one of M$ gimmicks to trap 'em (aka consumers) in update-that-always-break-something OS

 

[rtwjunkie]

Is this DX12 for win7 installed through an update or how the hell you get this? considering going back to win7, now that i got no reason to stick with win10.

It’s going to be a per game basis, to only work with the patched games. WOW is first one. It will be distributed as a game patch, not MS.

 

[lexluthermiester]

HELL NAW, it will make windows 7 even harder to kill than it already is,

Exactly. And that's a very good thing.

It will be distributed as a game patch, not MS.

Although, they might... Stranger things have happened.