We would have liked Microsoft to make the effort to support DirectX 12 under Windows 7 in 2015, when the framework appeared on Windows 10. It is nevertheless interesting to see this support arriving today, even if only certain games will be able to do so. take advantage.
© Blizzard
Microsoft announces that the user mode of DirectX 12 is now ported to Windows 7. To take advantage of it, it is necessary to update its system with the last Patch Tuesday released, but that's not all. Indeed, Microsoft has unfortunately chosen to provide support for DirectX 12 on a case-by-case basis under Windows 7, in partnership with video game developers. There is therefore no question of supporting all games integrating a DX12 rendering mode. Worse, for now, only one game is eligible. It is about World of Warcraft (since the update 8.1.5 of the title), Blizzard having obviously been one of the privileged partners of Microsoft in this port.
No, you're not dreaming, Microsoft has chosen a game that is almost 15 years old to praise the DirextX 12 compatibility for an operating system whose technical support will end in less than a year. (the date is January 14, 2020) ... Obviously, once the OS and the game are up to date, World of Warcraft will only be able to run in DirectX 12 under Windows 7 if the graphics card used allows it. It too must, of course, be DirectX 12 compatible (without necessarily supporting all the features of the low-level programming API of the GPU).
"We are currently working with a few other video game developers to port their D3D12 games to Windows 7," Microsoft said without saying more. The publisher does not forget to recall in passing that running his computer on Windows 10 is a "much better choice" to take advantage of DirectX 12. Thus, he adds: "WoW players under WIndows 7 can enjoy their game preferred over DirectX 12 with improved frame rate, although the best DirectX 12 performance will still be on Windows 10, a system that incorporates many optimizations designed to make DirectX 12 even faster. "
Remember that nothing technically would have prevented Microsoft from making DirectX 12 compatible with Windows 7 when it was launched. The choice to make it a technology reserved for Windows 10 is due to strategic and commercial reasons to encourage users to migrate to the new operating system.
