Intel Arc "Alchemist" graphics architecture was originally developed as a forward-facing PC GPU architecture with many of the contemporary graphics technologies, including full DirectX 12 Ultimate support, however, the GPU curiously
lacks hardware support for DirectX 9. Released 20 years ago, DirectX 9 continued to power AAA PC titles well into the 2010s as game console development lagged (the era of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3), and most e-sports titles of the time included either native or fallback DirectX 9 support for those on older GPUs. This is a problem for Intel, as many of the currently-popular e-Sports titles may still use DirectX 9, and so the Intel Graphics team set out to individually optimize DirectX 9 titles with each new Arc GPU driver release.
While Arc GPUs lack DirectX 9 support, foolproof API translation technologies exist, which convert DirectX 9 API instructions into DirectX 12. This is not fundamentally unlike how 32-bit applications work on 64-bit Windows (using WOW64 machine-architecture translation). This, however, requires per-game optimization to ensure any engine-level special features are correctly translated. With the latest 101.3959 Beta drivers, Intel optimized popular DirectX 9 titles "League of Legends," "Counter Strike: Global Offensive," "Starcraft 2," "Payday 2," "Guild Wars 2," "Stellaris," "NiZhan," and "Moonlight Blade." The company seems to be going about this the smart way, by relying on market analysis for selecting the games in need of optimization (understanding what DirectX 9 games are still being played).