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Microsoft Brings DirectX 12 To Windows 7 (anandtech.com)
Microsoft has announced a form of DirectX 12 that will support Windows 7. "Now before you get too excited, this is currently only enabled for World of Warcraft; and indeed it's not slated to be a general-purpose solution like DX12 on Win10," reports AnandTech. "Instead, Microsoft has stated that they are working with a few other developers to bring their DX12 games/backends to Windows 7 as well. As a consumer it's great to see them supporting their product ten years after it launched, but with the entire OS being put out to pasture in nine months, it seems like an odd time to be dedicating resources to bringing it new features." From the report: For some background, Microsoft's latest DirectX API was created to remove some of the CPU bottlenecks for gaming by allowing for developers to use low-level programming conventions to shift some of the pressure points away from the CPU. This was a response to single-threaded CPU performance plateauing, making complex graphical workloads increasingly CPU-bounded. There's many advantages to using this API over traditional DX11, especially for threading and draw calls. But, Microsoft made the decision long ago to only support DirectX 12 on Windows 10, with its WDDM 2.0 driver stack.
Today's announcement is a pretty big surprise on a number of levels. If Microsoft had wanted to back-port DX12 to Windows 7, you would have thought they'd have done it before Windows 7 entered its long-term servicing state. As it is, even free security patches for Windows 7 are set to end on January 14, 2020, which is well under a year away, and the company is actively trying to migrate users to Windows 10 to avoid having a huge swath of machines sitting in an unpatched state. In fact, they are about to add a pop-up notification to Windows 7 to let users know that they are running out of support very soon. So adding a big feature like DX12 now not only risks undermining their own efforts to migrate people away from Windows 7, but also adding a new feature well after Windows 7 entered long-term support. It's just bizarre.
Today's announcement is a pretty big surprise on a number of levels. If Microsoft had wanted to back-port DX12 to Windows 7, you would have thought they'd have done it before Windows 7 entered its long-term servicing state. As it is, even free security patches for Windows 7 are set to end on January 14, 2020, which is well under a year away, and the company is actively trying to migrate users to Windows 10 to avoid having a huge swath of machines sitting in an unpatched state. In fact, they are about to add a pop-up notification to Windows 7 to let users know that they are running out of support very soon. So adding a big feature like DX12 now not only risks undermining their own efforts to migrate people away from Windows 7, but also adding a new feature well after Windows 7 entered long-term support. It's just bizarre.
Seems like a great way to get people to install a patch that includes a nag screen. Just attach something of value to it!
I distinctly remember MS saying it was impossible for win 7 to get any newer DX versions because of the infrastructure in win 10 they said allows those new versions of DX to function.
Weird, almost like they were lying?
What's next, DCH?
Still even exists?
but he's muslim, and so you get this. No virgins for your eternal bliss.
How does this development effect whamen? Does Windows 7 support for DX12 unfairly target whamen? Won't someone please think of the whamen?
If you downvote this post, you officially hate whamen.
Sorry Microsoft, Vulkan is the future. DX12 the past. It's too late.
DirectX12 is supported by the Geforce 970 which was released in 2014.
DX12 was also released in 2015 - it could have easily been ported to Windows 7 several years ago.
Microsoft has a tendency to create APIs, then phase them out gradually to force upgrades. That said, if you do not build your software around these dependencies, you won't have to have multiple builds for a release. Stick with open standards, like Vulkan.
IF I wanted to do a virus? It would SLOWLY destroy every disk on the planet - how?? Inflate file tables w/ zero byte file entries (do you possess the intelligence & SAAVY to know what happens then? DOUBT IT so I'll tell a CRETIN like you - MFT$ or other OS file tables would GROW until there is NO SPACE LEFT, zero, game over).
* You really wouldn't WANT someone like ME to build bad shit (& I don't - I build what helps EVEN ASSHOLES LIKE YOU out https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... you FUCK!).
YOU & all "your kind"? HUMAN FILTH - pure waste & you KNOW it (die now, suicide your WASTED self & do society a GIANT favor, please... ok? Thanks).
APK
P.S.=> Sometimes, especially when DO-NOTHING LOSERS like you pull the shit you are (which everyone SEES sheer WASTES OF LIFE no talent or skill SHIT like you does what you do my way)? I wonder WHY I put the effort out - really! HOWEVER:
There are GOOD PEOPLE out there - I figure it's a 50/50 yin & yang split balance - for them, I DO... apk
For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.
Mystery Red of the Great American Eclipse
It has blood on it!
ABCNews: Eclipse makes pendulum wander
Losing my religion
Sun researchers find strange eclipse reading
M$ has a pretty bad reputation at end of cycle, breaking programs, blocking use of documents with the next version, doing all sorts of crap. DX12 run on windows 7 at your risk, you can bet when it break all over the place, M$ will say but windows 7 is no longer supported.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Except older computers could run win 10 if it wasted fewer resources on telemetry and other things many people do not want...My computer is 10 years old running win 7 and working just fine. I have no interest in win 10 for a number of reasons...maybe microsoft should be required to maintain security patching of older OS's for a longer time. To use a car analogy car manufacturers are required to provide parts for all models for 30 years. Why should microsoft get to just stop when they don't want to do it any longer. People and businesses have a lot invested and it can cost quite a bit to migrate from one version of Windows to the next. It's not like computers are progressing at breakneck speeds anymore.
Otherwise, why go to all that trouble?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
See subject & I'll publicly shame them as I have 9 other companies fucking up that make USELESS antivirus (tavis ormandy)? I have before - & it's TOO easy.
APK
P.S.=> Go for it apebrain... please, lol - DO ME A HUGE FAVOR & let me SHOOT THEM DOWN PUBLICLY as I Have before... apk
Windows 10 is a complete nuisance on older machines.
If you don't have your machine running constantly so it keeps up to date, the forced updates are resource-hogs that can make the machine almost unusable for a couple of hours after boot.
At least that is what I've seen happening with a couple of customers who brought in their notebooks for repair, because they were running too slow. Stuff like update blockers are also a no-go for those kinds of people.
Performing deep malware scans usually show up negative results and little other issues are there. The problem fixes itself by letting the machine run for a while connected to the internet.
Screw Microsoft for forcing their remote controlled crapware on every unsuspecting customer of previous versions.
They probably found out, that their new Nag-Popup needs DirectX 12 to work.
Security updates yes for a while.
Games? That should be time for a new computer.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Makes complete sense to me. Things are really messed up in the consumer desktop space...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
What the hell does this mean? Is DX12 already on Windows 7 or isn't it?
How does DX12 only come with WoW? WoW is a fucking game, DX12 is part of the operating system.
That effort would be including to give users transparency and update control over their machines back. And you can bet your arse that this is not going to happen.
Wish I had mod points.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
In fact, they are about to add a pop-up notification to Windows 7 to let users know that they are running out of support very soon.
Thankfully I disabled MS updates years ago to prevent Install Windows10' pop-ups. I dodged two bullets!
Go peddle your crack elsewhere you fucking moron.
Buy a new computer.
Yeah, that's what a customer likes to hear when their stuff used to work perfectly with with everything they were doing.
I'd rather sell them a data migration service and a downgrade back to Win 7.
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes
aka
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts
Trick you into turning automatic updates on they will.
They're charging for updates past January 14th, 2020. So after that you have to pay by the year for updates. I think they did this because it's either buy Windows 10 or buy security patches for Windows 7 i.e they earn money either way so let's just throw them a bone to make us earn more money.
According to Wikipedia "DirectX 12 was announced by Microsoft at GDC on March 20, 2014".
Really, Microsnot just decided to ignore the Windows 7 user for a bunch of years hoping that they would upgrade, or buy computer with Win10.
It is NOT newsworthy that it happened... and unfortunately, it's not even newsworthy any-more that Microsnot doesn't give a crap about their customers.
DX12 was never difficult to bring to Windows 7. The sole reason it was only released to Windows 10 was to drive adoption of Win 10.
There is a large portion of the world who don't have the money to upgrade their computers every-time a new Windows version is released.
Running a "modern" version of Window on an older computer will make the computer run like crap.
But as Microsoft needs to keep the game creators and users happy, old computers/OS's need newer DirectX versions
What about Windows 8, that's what I have. It's still got plenty of time left for support. This is maybe Microsoft's way of saying "maybe we could support you, but we won't because we hate you."
Build a computer that will run Windows 10.
There is no way to "build" a laptop. (or maybe an ugly cost ineffective raspberry pi hack job, which might run a command line version of Windows 10)
China where WOW and windows 7 is big they want that market
It doesn't appear they have gone to much trouble, all they have done is ported the User mode portions, all the under the cover improvements in the low level API's etc have not been ported and those were the blockers for getting DX12 on Win 7.
There's three reasons:
1) WebGL/Browser/Chromium/Webkit cruft, Edge in Win10, https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-bringing-edge-windows-7-and-mac
2) Games and Enterprise customers that are game developers - Belive it or not, gaming stuff runs on servers. Why they would do it this way, seems backwards, but hey usually the monster/npc logic is actually a specialized version of the game client that needs to be aware of all the 3d crap, why do it all in software if you can leverage even a crappy iGPU. Keep in mind Xeons don't typically have iGPU's. So toss a Quadro P2000 in a server and you have a performance boost.
3) Some gamers seriously want this.
Reason 1 is why they would need to do this, otherwise they would have to develop newEdge against DX11 or even OpenGL. The far more likely thing is that they developed it against raw OpenGL ES3 so they can just hand over the WebGL cruft to OpenGL ES, and then on windows they use ANGLE like everyone else so the same experience is on all platforms.
That said, WebGL and WASM has been the two worst things to be "standardized" in the web, as these things turn web browsers into shitty 20 year old computers. Yes I get the real intent with these, but you may as well just disable WASM and save your self numerous backdoors the malware shit will create with WASM. WASM CAN NOT BE SECURED, It is literately anything-goes, it's not managed code or interpreted code that you can infer the logic of. We've gone 40 years without a viable C/C++ decompiler, why would anyone think a web browser could?
Which goes back to this thing about DirectX12, Microsoft clearly sees a reason to backport it, and a lot of it likely has to do with trying to ween developers off DX9/10/11, and since their build environments don't support DX12, they can't develop against it.
I'll be honest though, I think Microsoft has righted the ship on many fronts with Win10, but has kinda fumbled the execution when it comes to new technology. Why would you change the driver model half way through the driver life cycle? We did this song and dance before with XP.
It's quite insane trying to install GPU drivers when Intel decides they will only support Microsoft's new model, and nVidia only supports the old model unless you have a Quadro, then you can get the new model, and only if you're willing to risk throwing your entire workflow under the bus.
Like there is a not a lot of reason to hold onto Win7, Just like XP before it, the upgrades have more to do with hardware tech moving faster than the OS can retrofit things. The entire incentive to switch to Win7 was 64-bit. That's it. Win10 has no incentive to switch, and indeedly the larger issue is that newer Intel processors, and NVMe devices simply can not boot Win7. They could be made to, but because of Meltdown and Spectre, you don't want to. Microsoft's final patch for Win7 should be a "Service Pack 2" that recompiles the entire OS to be spectre/meltdown safe, and then critical security patches only after that. That also would allow them to undermine their own argument about obsoleting Win7.
Win 10 meanwhile probably needs to have a bi-annual feature update, but needs to be made modular so you don't have to install the new features, only the core OS changes. Like one thing that annoys me quite a bit is how stale windows images get in the corporate environment. I recently did a reimage of a Win10 machine and the image was 1607. That's not, one, that's like 3 versions out of date. So it needs to sit there and download about 4 GB all day on a sluggish WiFi network. I'm lucky of the corporate internet downloads 1Mbit/s. I've never seen anything above 5.
Let me download the core part of the update, I'll defer the feature upgrades until it can download them at 1am on a saturday.
What about Windows 8, that's what I have. It's still got plenty of time left for support. This is maybe Microsoft's way of saying "maybe we could support you, but we won't because we hate you."
Just business, Win10 is 55%, Win7 34%, Win8+8.1 9% and 2.5% still run XP/Vista. Still I wonder why the heck Microsoft would bother in their final year of support, it's either a trap to make it buggy and force people to Win10 or they're having cold feet and is considering a "Windows Classic" version? I mean 34% still prefer your ten year old OS and you even tried to give them a "free" upgrade? It's pretty clear the market thinks Win7 works just fine...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
According to Steam hardware survey 25% of people are still using Windows 7 which is a pretty high number for an OS that old.
Of course, that's helped by Microsoft themselves making a series of stupid changes in newer Windows versions
Running a "modern" version of Window on an older computer will make the computer run like crap.
I disagree with this. Remember the performance hit of Windows Vista? It was huge. It was the number one reason people hated it. However, all versions of Windows after Vista, seemed to run faster on the same hardware. Windows 7 was basically called "Windows Vista fixed" or "done right", and the success of Windows 7 was huge. Now around 2012, Microsoft came up with Windows 8, and one of the claims why you should upgrade was that Windows 8 does about anything faster, and it did. After all Windows 8 was being marketed as a viable tablet OS. The same claim was made for Windows 10. After all, Windows 10 had to be compatible with a number of Surface tablets with _only_ 2GB of RAM, and it did well.
I recall that circa 2016 when Windows 10 just came out, a distant acquaintance of my family who were also very broke fresh and computer illiterate immigrants begged me to fix a 2009 Dell PC they picked up from a trash bin at some hospital. They said they wanted to setup a PC for their child room. I took upon this project simply out of sheer curiosity about just how useful or useless a PC with Core2 Duo CPU and 2GB of memory (max) can be.
This PC had a license for a version of Windows Vista, and after getting hold of the media and all of the updates, this turned out to be a passable "kiosk" PC, just in case if all you do is use gmail or watch youtube. Then I decided to try Windows 10 on the same machine. Back then there still existed a loophole allowing to upgrade from Vista to Windows 10 for free, and it worked! So anyways, the performance of this PC under 10 was at least as good as with Vista. Moreover, even Windows 10 haters like me have to agree that 10 is a lot better than Vista in terms of software usability today (I really hate the look and feel of Vista). The core of this story is that a decent PC from as far back as 2009 is still good enough to run Windows 10 even with 2GB of RAM (just don't open a gazillion of tabs in Firefox), and that Windows versions past-Vista really did improve performance.
Why did this happen? For one, operating systems have become very mature. You can't compare the security features of Windows 7 vs Windows 95 and ME. 7 already had most things built in, like modern file systems, multiuser support, firewall, robust networking and multitasking, etc. At some point, software manufacturers see that there is no pressing need to add more "bloat" to something that's already mature. Another issue is that we can't take hardware upgrades for granted any more. Industry experts agree that shrinking chip manufacturing process below 7nm is basically already hitting the wall. This means, no more Moore's Law. No more "free" CPU cores. No more "free" doubling of RAM or SSD storage every 2-3 years. The picture of the PC that's manufactured today is likely to be very similar to one made five years from now. So I really don't think any significant software company still thinks that "hardware is free".
According to Steam hardware survey 25% of people are still using Windows 7 which is a pretty high number for an OS that old.
I don't know about your references, but I will take your word for it. What's really surprising is that this 25% number, if it's true, coming from Steam!! The PC games company! Why is this interesting? Because this is a statistic pertaining to the consumer PC user community, not corporate/government. It is well known that organizations are very slow to upgrade the OS because they're very conservative (don't fix what's not broken) and their IT departments are overworked anyways. But to see a Steam survey saying that 25% of its users are running Windows 7 is highly significant. Shockingly, so many people still prefer running a 10 year old OS. This is very telling about how badly received Windows 10 is.
From Lotus to DRDOS to WordPerfect to IE to DX. Worse, MS still insist on keeping the copyrights, but the code is no longer sold or worth anything TO sell, yet MS will insist ongetting the full 150k for infringing on something even they insist is worthless and not worth working on. THAT means nobody else is allowedtofix earlier versions of Windows too.
IMO if source code is not released and copyrights rescinded, software should remain supported and sold by the rightsholder. Music and movies are already in a form that is the copyrighted part, the sound and vision stuff. Software is not: the copyrighted bit is the source, not the non-expressive object code. So if you think to pretend this is a slipper slope problem, then think again. And, no the execution of the code is a PERFORMANCE, not the fixed-in-medium expression required for copyrights. The only reason why it still persists is because nobody with enough money has been able or willing to challenge the abuse of copyright on non-expressive, non-copyrightable object code.
Nobody cares, we know. You're a loon and a criminal.
Most older games (pre-2018) simply runs better on Windows 7 than Windows 10.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
"Under Windows 10 everyone gets better service"
Nope. Wrong. Unless you call spyware a good service.
", security"
Nope. MS not fixing security holes in Win7 is not a reason for Win10 to be secure, it's a reason not to change, to punish the criminal who abuses copyright to extort money from you for their "upgrade" that is no such thing.
" and new updates? "
Again, Win7 being deliberately scuppered (yet copyrights and refusal to let anyone else support or fix it) is not a reason to move to Win10, it's a reason to REFUSE to be extorted cash by a criminal.
Win10 is better than the worst version of Windows ever released.
Nothing says that this is a bodge because the full stuff can't be ported. All this is is, like with their OpenGL DLLs, the MVP to get WoW to DX12 so that Blizz can tout it as an upgrade to the graphics engine, get everyone on to the new DX12 required version, then find that the Win7 doesn't actually cut it for playing WoW reliably because MS deliberately scuppered the implementation (or will add a patch that WILL scupper it later) and then these people who now have sunk hours and oodles of cash into this now DX12 only game and unable to ask to have it reverted to compatible with Win7 again, will be told by Blizz "Buy Win10 for full support!".
Having said that there's a major problem with this update mechanism: OEMs will eventually stop releasing up to date drivers for new Windows 10 releases and you'll end up with a Windows 10 PC/laptop where some piece of your equipment no longer works.
I'm guessing it has nothing to do with that and was a very reluctant decision, mostly based around Microsoft wanting developers to adopt DirectX12 and finding that impossible as long as it wasn't supported on Windows 7. I don't think it has anything to do with them believing Windows 7 will be around for one month or one century.
They'd have ported it to XP if it was easy, but in practice porting to 7 was probably trivial, as Windows 10 and Windows 7 aren't that different underneath (at least, for this kind of thing, whereas anything pre-Vista has to deal with significantly different under-the-hood APIs.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Kind of silly to finally add support now when we're nearing the end of life for Win 7.
If it's so trivial to buy a computer, when Win7 works fine,then YOU buy it for them. Easy to spend OTHER people's money, doesn't cost much to you, real cheap. Put your wallet where your posts have claimed, and buy computers for those on Win7.
APK prease2lrn2engrish k.
Modern file systems? Windows 7 doesn't even support ext2.
What's wrong, Microsoft? You've embraced open source, haven't you?
No, I don't want your stupid calculator. I want *this*.
No need to take his word for it. Steam publish it monthly https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
It's a self-selecting pool of users (those that install steam and don't tick the box to opt-out of reporting), but it's a great resource for anyone wanting to write software for consumer/gaming users.
Older computers run Windows 10 better than they run Windows 7
Certainly sounds like the left hand not talking to the right hand sort of thing.
Some department that was dedicated to making this happen just quietly working away oblivious (or not given layoffs) to the fact that they are producing something that probably shouldn't be produced at all, and the resources better spent elsewhere...
Either that or this has actually been in the works for a really long time, it was late getting released, and only now do they trust the implementation enough to let ordinary users have access to it.
There have been actual benchmarks to prove that you are full of shit.
In the form of dx12 to vulkan translation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-sHvo4rCas
It's just for one single game, and it's not a full DX12 just an emulation layer and there are no performance or graphics improvements. Thus, Blizzard could decide to make World of Warcraft only use DX12 and drop DX11 support, possibly it makes life easier for those game developers. But still no actual benefit to World of Warcraft players in any way. That might be a dumb move though as a game that size is making a lot of money from long term customers probably still using DX9 on lower end computers. Sure, Microsoft loves screwing the customers and doing things that cause great controversy with its customers; but most normal businesses realize that they have to treat their customers nicely if they want to retain them.
There's no real reason to upgrade from windows 8.1 to 10, support is still ongoing for quite some time and I don't know of any games I would ever play that have DX12 support and no plans to get a new graphics card for a several years.
I don't know what Microsoft is thinking here. The intentionally did not backport DX12 despite it being relatively simple to do, for the purpose of encouraging people to upgrade (which didn't work really since DX12 was not seen as an important upgrade). But then doing this just for WoW is strange, Microsoft doesn't own Blizzard so they get no direct benefit here as opposed to making this work for their own few (uninspiring) games. Maybe it's must more evidence that different departments within Microsoft are unable to talk to each other.
You've proven yourself a liar continuing to libel me as you STALK me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous. You're the loon & criminal.
APK
P.S.=> Get a life loser... apk
World of Warcraft is the only program that keeps many of its addicts using Windows instead of Linux. I know a few who had planned to stop playing once Win7 was no longer supported and they had to move to Linux or Win10. I think giving them access to Win10's DX12 eye candy right before killing Win7's security support is a genius move. Get 'em hooked on the improved graphics and they'll be much more likely to stay in the Microsoft-sphere for a few years longer.
"it's a colossal waste of time supporting and enhancing old software"
There is no such thing as old software.
Code is not technology, code can be changed to fit anything, anywhere within PHYSICAL limits, given enough motivation.
To effectively claim that "old incompatible software forces microsoft spy on you by slurping win10 "telemetry"" can possibly be plausible.. is a sign of how clued-in you are.
Technology is what you implement in code. A subtle but important difference.
Just because they say its a new version, does not make it so.
By patching and rewriting executables and adding indirection layers, anything is possible.
There's roughly 70ish % of win7 code in win 10, and so on.
Win 10 contains code from win3.1, most definitely.
With the money microsoft is making, they can in fact backport all win10 features to NT 4.0 if they so choose.
Your argument is marketing bullshit or inspired by it. Disguisting.
They will later kill it with some innocent system update and tell users that if they still want to play their just-bought DX12 games, they must switch to Win 10. For free!
Pathetic vermins. Never use anything from Microsoft.
Yeah, very likely Win 7 has a higher penetration in corporate settings and non-gaming home users. Also take into account that Win 7 users got the option of updating to 10 for free.
I assume you're talking about desktop PCs?
A lot of laptop type PCs come with custom software and drivers that allow people to use all the little peripheral features that come with the machine.
And while Vista stuff is mostly compatible with Windows 7, a lot of the Windows Vista and 7 stuff is not compatible with Windows 10. So unsuspecting customers start their free Windows 10 upgrade and it is breaking shit all over the place. A lot of those little features they've gotten used to won't work any longer.
Unfortunately for them, the notebook vendors usually do not provide software support for machines that are older than just a couple of years. Hence if your notebook is a couple of years older than Win 10 chances are that you'll regret upgrading to Win 10. Maybe you can blame them partially for the situation. Maybe this move from Microsoft with their "final" Windows version will break that cycle for the future. But at the end of the day it still Microsoft who blindly and stubbornly forced their crapware onto computer illiterates without considering their circumstances.
Oh, and if you start comparing things with Windows Vista, you can pretty much anything look good in comparison.
Citation needed.
Yeah, no klidding, I've yet to see a Windows 7 machine run Windows 10 better.
The nag popup will be included with the DX12 patch. See what they did there?
And linux doesn't even support NTFS 3.0 which is 20 years old (Yes, you can install a 3rd party driver like NTFS-3G, which will get you most of the way there), but you can install ext2 drivers in windows too, lol.
AC lots of brands have Windows 10 laptops for sale.
Shop around and configure a new Windows 10 ready laptop.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"