Intel Xe iGPUs and Arc Graphics Lack DirectX 9 Support, Rely on API Translation to Play Older Games

[btarunr]

So you thought your Arc A380 graphics card, or the Gen12 Xe iGPU in your 12th Gen Core processors were good enough to munch through your older games from the 2000s and early 2010s? Not so fast. Intel Graphics states that the Xe-LP and Xe-HPG graphics architectures, which power the Gen12 Iris Xe iGPUs and the new Arc "Alchemist" graphics cards, lack native support for the DirectX 9 graphics API. The two rely on API translation such as Microsoft D3D9On12, which attempts to translate D3D9 API commands to D3D12, which the drivers can recognize.

Older graphics architectures such as the Gen11 powering "Ice Lake," and Gen9.5 found in all "Skylake" derivatives, feature native support for DirectX 9, however when paired with Arc "Alchemist" graphics cards, the drivers are designed to engage D3D9On12 to accommodate the discrete GPU, unless the dGPU is disabled. API translation can be unreliable and buggy, and Intel points you to Microsoft and the game developers for support, Intel Graphics won't be providing any.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Crackong]

Intel Arc performance:
DX12 / vulkan - Acceptable in some games, and reBAR must be enabled.
DX11 - BAD
DX10 - BAD
DX9 - What is this? I need a dictionary.

 

[Ferrum Master]

The screenshot of Crysis isn't really in the place. First one being first DX10 capable, probably the only popular one.

Is Xe capable of native DX10 support?

 

[gdp77]

This should be no problem for Linux. Proton translates everything to Vulkan.

 

[Garrus]

Shouldn't be a problem. Arc has a lot of other more pressing issues. Price and performance and bugs with modern games first need to be fixed.

 

[Mussels]

I'd read something about this but didn't realise it was that bad


Sadly, i still play a bunch of DX9 titles... how bad would this be for something like Starcraft II, that's already weirdly unoptimised

 

[AusWolf]

I guess it's good that I have a Rocket Lake CPU with gen 12 graphics, so I can test my old favourites for bugs before buying an Arc GPU. I feel sorry for others who aren't so lucky.

 

[qlum]

just curious why not implement dxvk on a driver level?
It performs well when used on linux and can also be used on windows. Seems to me that it could be an effective fallback for intel

 

[ZoneDymo]

hmm again have to see how that works out, I wonder what the reason is for not natively supporting it, is it really that hard to do or demand that much space or something?
Also if the a750 is around 3060 levels then really this should not be that much of a problem maxing out dx9 games even with a deficit.

But if its buggy and inconsistent that will suck, and of course those that seek to play older games at 200 fps etc might not be able to with Intel hardware

 

[Mussels]

just curious why not implement dxvk on a driver level?
It performs well when used on linux and can also be used on windows. Seems to me that it could be an effective fallback for intel

Maybe the architecture doesnt work on it?

hmm again have to see how that works out, I wonder what the reason is for not natively supporting it, is it really that hard to do or demand that much space or something?
Also if the a750 is around 3060 levels then really this should not be that much of a problem maxing out dx9 games even with a deficit.

But if its buggy and inconsistent that will suck, and of course those that seek to play older games at 200 fps etc might not be able to with Intel hardware

All of the above I guess.
A lot of space and design on current GPU's is for older legacy code, too.
Look at how useless RTX cores are for DX9, for example.

 

[Andyr]

It seems wildly optimistic for Intel to expect dx9-era game deva to provide any support for hardware that didn't exist at the time.

One of the biggest sells of PC gaming is that you can still play your back catalogue on modern hardware... Fortunately there's Proton and dgVoodoo 2.

 

[InVasMani]

I can hardly wait to see user benchmarks give Arc much praise!

 

[ModEl4]

The screenshot of Crysis isn't really in the place. First one being first DX10 capable, probably the only popular one.

Is Xe capable of native DX10 support?

Isn't it Crysis 2? (March 2011, cryengine 3, DX11 patch 3 months after release)

 

[Ferrum Master]

Isn't it Crysis 2? (March 2011, cryengine 3, DX11 patch 3 months after release)

It is 2, but as said the First one. The example is really out of place... some original Skyrim would be better.

 

[Tartaros]

Maybe the architecture doesnt work on it?

I think it's work in progress and they have to implement it yet, this problem of has been known for a long time. It doesn't make sense they made a new architecture and not making it capable of at least emulating old stuff if they want to compete with AMD and Nvidia.

 

[Bomby569]

I imagine young people (the streaming generation) will have zero issues with this. It just serves a specific market.

I think it's work in progress and they have to implement it yet, this problem of has been known for a long time. It doesn't make sense they made a new architecture and not making it capable of at least emulating old stuff if they want to compete with AMD and Nvidia.

they said exactly that, it's on the to do list

 

[erek]

Why couldn’t they just take the Gen core and beef it up significantly to compete in the dedicated space? Just seems as if the Gen hardware and drivers are pretty robust and solid or am I missing something?

 

[Deleted member 185088]

On eof the strength of PC gaming is the large number of games going Bach decades.
How could Intel mess up so badly, they have been making GPUs and drivers forever.

 

[THU31]

I was really counting on Intel to provide more competition in the GPU space, but it is not looking good.

I will definitely not be a guinea pig for their hardware and software. I would rather pay twice as much for the same performance if everything works perfectly.

Playing old games is not straightforward even on NVIDIA and AMD, but you can usually get everything to work with some tweaks. At least you get native support for the APIs.

And this may be the least of Intel's problems, but it is significant nonetheless.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Why couldn’t they just take the Gen core and beef it up significantly to compete in the dedicated space? Just seems as if the Gen hardware and drivers are pretty robust and solid or am I missing something?

Quite a lot, they are not much better in use on modern titles, so In effect the opposite of Arc, wouldn't bother me personally though, I don't buy something to play old games often, and if I do it's well considered and wouldn't be this.

Still want to buy a arc 770 though so hurry the f up Intel FFS.

 

[sam_86314]

That explains why Dragon's Dogma ran like garbage on my laptop until I installed DXVK.

This is quite disappointing and would be a complete dealbreaker if DXVK didn't exist.

 

[konga]

There are many things more concerning about Arc than this. DX9 games are old, and I doubt any of the arc cards will run into any trouble running them even with this conversion layer.

I'd read something about this but didn't realise it was that bad


Sadly, i still play a bunch of DX9 titles... how bad would this be for something like Starcraft II, that's already weirdly unoptimised

At the very least, there should be no performance concerns. Starcraft II will probably run exactly as bad as it normally does. That game is heavily CPU limited, and nothing that effects GPU performance (if this even does) would hurt since the GPU will be heavily underutilized no matter what.

 

[bonehead123]

Hummm....

Anutha day, yet ANUTHA reason to throw moar shade & shame at da Arc, hehehe

Perhaps they can salvage something out of this dumpster fire by changing the name to "Achy Breaky".....

 

[HisDivineOrder]

And the hits keep on comin'...

 

[iO]

"Yea, let's rely on emulation by 3rd party software. What could possibly go wrong?!"