*Checks today's date.* Huh... it isn't April Fools Day...
*Reads article* Yeah that's pretty strange. Definitely contradictory signals for migrating people to Win10 before Win7 End of Support. Now they have more reason to stay...
So this is essentially a dx12 emulator to some spesific games? This Sounds so much apprils fools news... maybe it is a leak from that spesific day release...
Laughed at this too. It seems like they try to include some comments of experts in each post, but only a comment from Ryan seems just a bit ironic. It is funny though.
I think this indicates that DX12 on Windows 7 was a relatively trivial thing to implement, and that it was kept off Windows 7 purely to drive Windows 10 adoption. I'm guessing the game studios probably knew this, so with enough pressure (and incentives) from a big enough company like Blizzard, Microsoft said "ok". Just speculation of course.
If you read the entire article its pretty clear that isn't the case. They didn't port all of it, and its game specific. Think of it as closer to a shim for translating DX12 features for the native version of DX.
I'm reminded of EA's claim that SimCity 5 absolutely needed to be online-only — because the game needed supercomputers to do all of its amazingly complex calculations.
Then, a hacker took it offline, showing that EA, once again, had nothing on.
MS claimed that DX12 was super-duper dependent upon super-awesome new Windows 10. It was hand-crafted to run in Windows 10 and only Windows 10.
In reality, the only thing that MS spent so much time crafting was its spyware. But, even that was partially backported to 7.
They both show the same kind of failure to prepare for potential serious problems due to some kind of personal failure. Suggesting that they can't be compared seems unreasonable.
>That's why you should never install anything via windows update on win7 post 2014 or around win10 "free upgrade" campaign.
That's fine as long as that machine is never connected to the Internet. If you accidentally, or foolishly, connect to the Internet without updates, you're working to compromise your whole network.
And again, if you read the article portions of DX12 are not present in this. It's feature limited to only what this game needs. Because while yes you could theoretically rip the entire video stack from Win10 and put it into Windows, its more work than is worth doing.
I don't know "how much work it is" to bring a library and make it work with an existing run time. For sure it would be a big work making Win7 use DX12 natively for it's interface and internal renderings, which is not required, but for applications that use the added library (be it DX11 or DX12, Vulkan or OpenGL) I can't really understand all this big work needed to allow them to use it.
What is sure is that the choice to not bring DX12 to Win7 was to try to improve the adoption rate for the new version of the OS, which is however so critically managed (with random and buggy updates every week, interface inconsistency which resemble a toy more than a modern UI, games added to even the pro versions) that is a fail also with DX12 exclusivity.
Without more details, it's hard to say. In the [software] engineering field, very very rarely is the answer "impossible", It's just a matter of cost. Microsoft may have deemed the cost of refactoring everything to bring DX12 in any form back to Windows 7 to be too high. However, It's possible that Blizzard actually paid for this backport, in that case, if Blizzard was willing to front the cost (and possibly more...), Microsoft might change their tune. For Blizzard being able to EOL their DX10 or older codepath might be worth more. Without details, paths for speculation is way too broad...
Yeah, the restriction was imposed by corporate, not by any technical limitation. They just didn't bother making DX12 support WDDM 1.1 so 2.0 and with it windows 10 became a "requirement". This really became obvious when Vulkan although similar in functionality managed to support windows 7 just fine.
You're exactly right. The only reason they haven't done that is because DX12 was the dangling carrot for those dumb enough to take the bait. It wasn't enough of a reason for some to embrace the cancer OS, but it did lure some into drinking the Kool-Aid.
Win8/8.1 are starting to feel like abandonware at this point. Even Nvidia's drivers for the new RTX GPUs are available for either Win10 or 7 (although win7 ones work fine with win8.1), not for 8/8.1. Same for ASUS, who are updating their various softwares for 10 and 7 only, since 2016 I believe.
I dont think its all that inconcievable. MS will benefit by devs moving to DX12, both as Windows as a platform, and Xbox.
The limited nature of the Windows 7 release lets Microsoft encourage devs over to DX12 on a case by case basis without having to maintain it wholesale.
The weird thing is that Blizzard push for WoW to have DX12 on Windows 7 doesn't actually seem to be a sign they are going to standardize on DX12 any time soon. In fact, alongside the DX12 support they also released a new DX11 path that takes advantage of DX11-style multi-threaded rendering while also continuing to support their old DX11 path. So now they are maintaining 3 different rendering backends.
It isn't unusual for corporations to continue paying Microsoft for extended EOL support, this has been happening with Exchange, SQL and most notably Windows XP for at least a decade. So sure if you pay up they'll work with you. I guess it was a cost benefit for Blizzard to have the API\WDDM 2.0 or whatever hackjob MS did ported back to Windows 7 (and what about Windows 8.1?) instead of creating a DX11 version of the game.
And obviously Windows 7 is of high interest to Blizzard: China has the largest installed base of Windows 7 and China is the largest WoW market.
I am not too happy about this. While it looks great for users, it takes lots of developer resources that might have been used to improve W10/Dx12, only to introduce single purpose "Dx11.99_for_WoW". Unless there was big enough Win7 WoW players & developers group in MS, it will be quite frustrating for the devs too, because they are fundamentally working on a dead platform.
That's what they did. The headline could be clarified that it's a subset of DX12 for specific games, but then it might get too wordy. It's not clickbait if it's essentially true.
Well, no, it it is not. MS has not brought DX12 to Win7, they just enabled some a game (up to now) to take advantage of some of the DX12 features that were locked out before. It's not a "Win7 gains DX12 support" as the title suggests.
I find it slightly odd that they're doing this for Windows 7 but not 8/8.1... I can only assume that means at this point the 8/8.1 install base must be tiny compared to 7.
I'm guessing Microsoft is expecting people to pay for the extended support for a few years to come. Nothing else makes any sense. Some people just hate 10 that damn much, even though all their issues are of their own creation.
Seriously dude? I don’t hate windows 10, I only hate people who says windows 10 is better and people who thinks windows 10 is better. Can you tell me what’s better in windows 10? Or anything you can do on 10 that I can’t do on 7? I basically work with programs on windows, not with windows. I can tell you many bs in 10. Even the settings in 7 is better than 10. When you adjust settings on 10, some with OK and Apply buttons but some has no buttons to confirm what you just set. Isn’t that annoying? How about constant background processes? Constant connections sending who knows what to who knows where? P2P updates? Basic settings that buried somewhere. There’s more but why don’t you just google it. 10 is just annoying as the people who prefers it over 7.
I tested 10 on all my household’s desktops and laptops, upgraded friends’ too. Freaking wastes of time. Damn 10 can’t even manage paging right.
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MrCommunistGen - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
*Checks today's date.*Huh... it isn't April Fools Day...
*Reads article*
Yeah that's pretty strange. Definitely contradictory signals for migrating people to Win10 before Win7 End of Support. Now they have more reason to stay...
Another IT Guy - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
This is a big deal.jimbobjuicemaster - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
What games are exclusively DX12? Forza. Halo. Gears of War. Not much else... besides Microsoft studio games.haukionkannel - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
So this is essentially a dx12 emulator to some spesific games? This Sounds so much apprils fools news... maybe it is a leak from that spesific day release...BobSwi - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Thanks MS!nathanddrews - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Perhaps this is a precursor to them extending the support window. Definitely odd.baka_toroi - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
There's nothing else (computing wise) I want more to happen than that.mode_13h - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
> "This is a big deal" - Ryan Smith, Editor-in-Chief of AnandTechLol! Thanks for that!
:)
tmnvnbl - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Laughed at this too. It seems like they try to include some comments of experts in each post, but only a comment from Ryan seems just a bit ironic. It is funny though.Wardrop - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
I think this indicates that DX12 on Windows 7 was a relatively trivial thing to implement, and that it was kept off Windows 7 purely to drive Windows 10 adoption. I'm guessing the game studios probably knew this, so with enough pressure (and incentives) from a big enough company like Blizzard, Microsoft said "ok". Just speculation of course.Reflex - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
If you read the entire article its pretty clear that isn't the case. They didn't port all of it, and its game specific. Think of it as closer to a shim for translating DX12 features for the native version of DX.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
I'm reminded of EA's claim that SimCity 5 absolutely needed to be online-only — because the game needed supercomputers to do all of its amazingly complex calculations.Then, a hacker took it offline, showing that EA, once again, had nothing on.
MS claimed that DX12 was super-duper dependent upon super-awesome new Windows 10. It was hand-crafted to run in Windows 10 and only Windows 10.
In reality, the only thing that MS spent so much time crafting was its spyware. But, even that was partially backported to 7.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
That's why you should never install anything via windows update on win7 post 2014 or around win10 "free upgrade" campaign.sorten - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Good grief. Are you guys also skipping vaccinations?Reflex - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Most likely...piroroadkill - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Yes, because comparing not caring about your computer and not caring about your own health is very reasonable.Bolognesus - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
It's dunning-kruger incarnate as spread via profoundly stupid social media (and forum) posts. Eh, I'm seeing some similarities.mkaibear - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
>It's dunning-kruger incarnateHeh. I'm stealing that! What an excellent way to describe it.
JeffFlanagan - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
They both show the same kind of failure to prepare for potential serious problems due to some kind of personal failure. Suggesting that they can't be compared seems unreasonable.Notmyusualid - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
If 'vaccinations' is suddenly the new word for spyware, then the answer is absolutely.JeffFlanagan - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
>That's why you should never install anything via windows update on win7 post 2014 or around win10 "free upgrade" campaign.That's fine as long as that machine is never connected to the Internet. If you accidentally, or foolishly, connect to the Internet without updates, you're working to compromise your whole network.
Reflex - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
And again, if you read the article portions of DX12 are not present in this. It's feature limited to only what this game needs. Because while yes you could theoretically rip the entire video stack from Win10 and put it into Windows, its more work than is worth doing.CiccioB - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
I don't know "how much work it is" to bring a library and make it work with an existing run time.For sure it would be a big work making Win7 use DX12 natively for it's interface and internal renderings, which is not required, but for applications that use the added library (be it DX11 or DX12, Vulkan or OpenGL) I can't really understand all this big work needed to allow them to use it.
What is sure is that the choice to not bring DX12 to Win7 was to try to improve the adoption rate for the new version of the OS, which is however so critically managed (with random and buggy updates every week, interface inconsistency which resemble a toy more than a modern UI, games added to even the pro versions) that is a fail also with DX12 exclusivity.
weilin - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Without more details, it's hard to say. In the [software] engineering field, very very rarely is the answer "impossible", It's just a matter of cost. Microsoft may have deemed the cost of refactoring everything to bring DX12 in any form back to Windows 7 to be too high. However, It's possible that Blizzard actually paid for this backport, in that case, if Blizzard was willing to front the cost (and possibly more...), Microsoft might change their tune. For Blizzard being able to EOL their DX10 or older codepath might be worth more. Without details, paths for speculation is way too broad...blppt - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
I personally was never under any illusion that it WASN'T trivial considering that the like minded Vulkan runs just fine on Win 7.Notmyusualid - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Good point.tk11 - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Yeah, the restriction was imposed by corporate, not by any technical limitation. They just didn't bother making DX12 support WDDM 1.1 so 2.0 and with it windows 10 became a "requirement". This really became obvious when Vulkan although similar in functionality managed to support windows 7 just fine.Jorgp2 - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
If you read the blog you would know it's only the user's pace component.So it's like directx 11 on vista
Mr. Fox - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
You're exactly right. The only reason they haven't done that is because DX12 was the dangling carrot for those dumb enough to take the bait. It wasn't enough of a reason for some to embrace the cancer OS, but it did lure some into drinking the Kool-Aid.boozed - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Inconceivable!Gigaplex - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
What about DX12 on Win8?Rudde - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Is there still people on win8?? Ahem, I mean, good question.D. Lister - Friday, September 20, 2019 - link
Win8/8.1 are starting to feel like abandonware at this point. Even Nvidia's drivers for the new RTX GPUs are available for either Win10 or 7 (although win7 ones work fine with win8.1), not for 8/8.1. Same for ASUS, who are updating their various softwares for 10 and 7 only, since 2016 I believe.C@mM! - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
I dont think its all that inconcievable. MS will benefit by devs moving to DX12, both as Windows as a platform, and Xbox.The limited nature of the Windows 7 release lets Microsoft encourage devs over to DX12 on a case by case basis without having to maintain it wholesale.
ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/new-graphi...The weird thing is that Blizzard push for WoW to have DX12 on Windows 7 doesn't actually seem to be a sign they are going to standardize on DX12 any time soon. In fact, alongside the DX12 support they also released a new DX11 path that takes advantage of DX11-style multi-threaded rendering while also continuing to support their old DX11 path. So now they are maintaining 3 different rendering backends.
Samus - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
I wonder how much Blizzard paid them to do this.It isn't unusual for corporations to continue paying Microsoft for extended EOL support, this has been happening with Exchange, SQL and most notably Windows XP for at least a decade. So sure if you pay up they'll work with you. I guess it was a cost benefit for Blizzard to have the API\WDDM 2.0 or whatever hackjob MS did ported back to Windows 7 (and what about Windows 8.1?) instead of creating a DX11 version of the game.
And obviously Windows 7 is of high interest to Blizzard: China has the largest installed base of Windows 7 and China is the largest WoW market.
piroroadkill - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
3DMark next please! Then we can compare...ceisserer - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Unbelievable how customer-friendly MS can behave when they are facing competition.HollyDOL - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
I am not too happy about this. While it looks great for users, it takes lots of developer resources that might have been used to improve W10/Dx12, only to introduce single purpose "Dx11.99_for_WoW". Unless there was big enough Win7 WoW players & developers group in MS, it will be quite frustrating for the devs too, because they are fundamentally working on a dead platform.Schmich - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Shitty clickbait title that will spread false information due to people not reading the atricle.sbrown23 - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
"Microsoft Brings DirectX 12 to Windows 7"That's what they did. The headline could be clarified that it's a subset of DX12 for specific games, but then it might get too wordy. It's not clickbait if it's essentially true.
CiccioB - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Well, no, it it is not.MS has not brought DX12 to Win7, they just enabled some a game (up to now) to take advantage of some of the DX12 features that were locked out before.
It's not a "Win7 gains DX12 support" as the title suggests.
domboy - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
I find it slightly odd that they're doing this for Windows 7 but not 8/8.1... I can only assume that means at this point the 8/8.1 install base must be tiny compared to 7.UltraWide - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Let Windows 7 RIPsonny73n - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Nah, I’ll stick to windows 7 for another 10 years.Notmyusualid - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
INTERESTING news, especially to those of us who won't swallow Windows 10, for the tea in China...I will however, swallow fees for extended support for Windows 7. I don't mind that too much at all.
SkOrPn - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
I'm guessing Microsoft is expecting people to pay for the extended support for a few years to come. Nothing else makes any sense. Some people just hate 10 that damn much, even though all their issues are of their own creation.sonny73n - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
Seriously dude? I don’t hate windows 10, I only hate people who says windows 10 is better and people who thinks windows 10 is better. Can you tell me what’s better in windows 10? Or anything you can do on 10 that I can’t do on 7? I basically work with programs on windows, not with windows. I can tell you many bs in 10. Even the settings in 7 is better than 10. When you adjust settings on 10, some with OK and Apply buttons but some has no buttons to confirm what you just set. Isn’t that annoying? How about constant background processes? Constant connections sending who knows what to who knows where? P2P updates? Basic settings that buried somewhere. There’s more but why don’t you just google it. 10 is just annoying as the people who prefers it over 7.I tested 10 on all my household’s desktops and laptops, upgraded friends’ too. Freaking wastes of time. Damn 10 can’t even manage paging right.
danwat1234 - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
..So, no DX12 for Windows 8.1?AMD_PoolShark28 - Thursday, March 14, 2019 - link
AMD has just released a driver to support this feature, https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn...Flunk - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
Windows 7 EOL is next January, making this pretty pointless.