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DirectX 12 Makes Windows 7 Debut With Latest World of Warcraft Patch

FordGT90Concept

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But Windows 7 still doesn't support anything greater than WDDM 1.1. What they did is add the libraries so that Direct3D 12 calls can be translated to run on WDDM 1.1. Games using the AP will gain some performance benefit from that because D3D12 is much more multithreaded and leaner but it doesn't gain all of the benefits because many were in WDDM versions since 1.1. Could Microsoft have done this a long time ago? Yes. Why have they not? D3D12 adoption in general has been painfully slow so it wasn't a priority until a heavyweight (like Blizzard) started throwing its weight around.
 
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i wonder if @W1zzard will do a review about it.Should be interesting.
 
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They DONT!!! Which means you didn’t frickin read. It will be issued as a game patch, to work only with WoW!!!

In addition to post 1 (as @eidairaman1 mentioned), I also had already restated the issue clearly.

Direct source here:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/di...arcraft-uses-directx-12-running-on-windows-7/

That link doesnt say what you said at all.

The techpowerup story says DX12 will be made available in WOW via a patch. It may actually mean what you say that DX12 is been distributed via the patch, but its exact wording doesnt say that.

So again accusing me of not reading things when I have.

The blog link is the same, it simply says blizzard added DX12 support.

Feel free to quote where it says this "blizzard are distributing DX12 to WoW players".

But Windows 7 still doesn't support anything greater than WDDM 1.1. What they did is add the libraries so that Direct3D 12 calls can be translated to run on WDDM 1.1. Games using the AP will gain some performance benefit from that because D3D12 is much more multithreaded and leaner but it doesn't gain all of the benefits because many were in WDDM versions since 1.1. Could Microsoft have done this a long time ago? Yes. Why have they not? D3D12 adoption in general has been painfully slow so it wasn't a priority until a heavyweight (like Blizzard) started throwing its weight around.

Probably is some hacks done here and there yeah but its still DX12. Ultimately DX12 was exclusive to windows 10 to encourage adoption of windows 10, not because of technical reasons.
 
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Not this again, do people forget that there was win8 (also win8.1) before the advent of win10 :rolleyes:

WDDM changes aren't just for show & if you think win8 or win10 didn't bring changes to the win7 kernel, aside from WDDM or DX12, then there's no point talking about this!
It’s been a while and I prepared a lot of slides for DX12
but generally the constraints imposed by WDDM 1.1 still apply to all low-level GPU hardware abstractions on Windows 7. In the end the Win7/WDDM 1.1 system design & policies around GPU memory management & scheduling constrain the type of application and user scenarios that low-level APIs can be successful driving on that platform. It works decent for 1-2 high resource consuming applications at a time, but the user experience does not degrade gracefully if a lot of apps running simultaneously start loading up the GPU with low-level API usage on Windows 7. That does mean there’s a number of AAA games & engines that benefit from it though. Workstation apps are another category where the user tends to run just 1 high resource consuming app at a time, but users in that category tend to go for more recent OSs as that’s where the official support channels are greatest.

Why D3D12 on Win7? We’re at the next stage for D3D12 and low-level APIs in the technology adoption curve by developers and publishers. The next order of magnitude in the title & engine population are now designing first, or *only* for low-level APIs. The devs & publishers are making a lot of tradeoffs as part of this process:

  • How do they get the most fidelity, frame rate, and functionality out of the low-level API for each target platform?
  • How do they reward gamers who bought high end hardware with commensurate high end experiences?
  • How do they get the largest total addressable market?
    • Widest variety of hardware
    • On all the OS and device platforms where the gamers are
  • While keeping the engineering cost within budget

There’s a measurable population of gamers in some markets that likely won’t get off of Windows 7 in time for this next wave of titles and engines on low-level APIs. D3D12 on Windows 7 is what my team did to assist developers & publishers with the engineering cost and addressable market tradeoffs they were making. Developers get to focus more time/spend less effort on making their engines & titles work better on D3D12, publishers have a reduced cost for reaching their market on Windows, gamers who are stuck on Windows 7 still get to play the games with the limits imposed by that OS, and Windows 10 gamers get a larger number of games that can more fully exploit their hardware. All together it was a solution my team was really happy to make possible.

The system constraints in Windows 7, as well as the well aged properties of the ecosystem (just think of all the random drivers & software hooking into bizarre internal methods that were never designed to be touched outside of OS code), are why we’re doing a title by title rollout at first. We need to make sure the experience is a quality one across users, developers, and publishers.

Max McMullen
Development Manager
Compute, Graphics, and AI (yes, we chose the group name in that order because the acronym was funny to us)
Microsoft
https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/2062153/

Imagine any AAA game with DX11 vs DX12/vulkan on win10 - that's the difference you'll likely see with WoW especially wrt performance. FFS win7 is 10 years old :shadedshu:
 

FordGT90Concept

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Probably is some hacks done here and there yeah but its still DX12. Ultimately DX12 was exclusive to windows 10 to encourage adoption of windows 10, not because of technical reasons.
Only user mode D3D12 which is referring to these functions. Windows 7 hasn't been updated to support DirectX 12; rather, the D3D12 component has been "ported" to run on WDDM 1.1.
 

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That link doesnt say what you said at all.

The techpowerup story says DX12 will be made available in WOW via a patch. It may actually mean what you say that DX12 is been distributed via the patch, but its exact wording doesnt say that.

So again accusing me of not reading things when I have.

The blog link is the same, it simply says blizzard added DX12 support.

Feel free to quote where it says this "blizzard are distributing DX12 to WoW players".



Probably is some hacks done here and there yeah but its still DX12. Ultimately DX12 was exclusive to windows 10 to encourage adoption of windows 10, not because of technical reasons.
Since you don’t read well, from the link:

“After seeing such performance wins for their gamers running DirectX 12 on Windows 10, Blizzard wanted to bring wins to their gamers who remain on Windows 7,”

“Today, with game patch 8.1.5 for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, Blizzard becomes the first game developer to use DirectX 12 for Windows 7! Now, Windows 7 WoW gamers can run the game using DirectX 12 and enjoy a framerate boost,”

From their FAQ:
Any other DirectX 12 game coming to Windows 7?"
"We are currently working with a few other game developers to port their D3D12 games to Windows 7. Please watch out for further announcement.”
Again, a PER GAME basis.

Underlining emphasis is mine.
 
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what everyone said
Oh, The Everyone's Mouth speaking.

980ti and a 1440p
That's cool. Remind me, was 980Ti touted "DX12" card or was it not.
I still vaguely remember "nobody needs DX12" green tinted claims from back then.

Anyhow, while quite fine a card, 980Ti is not the best example to test DX12.

That article explains why kernel support is not needed.
Would you mind citing the relevant part.\
Is it this one:

I've just received confirmation from AMD that their forthcoming Vulkan driver will only work with the AMDGPU DRM kernel driver

?

Vulcan that worked better than DX12
Had that been the case, wouldn't we see game developers migrating to Vulkan en mass?

Why have they not?
Isn't it obvious?
 
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Mind blow .... dreams real

Blizzard actually managed to do the unthinkable, holy cow.


Only user mode D3D12 which is referring to these functions. Windows 7 hasn't been updated to support DirectX 12; rather, the D3D12 component has been "ported" to run on WDDM 1.1.

Isn't User-mode is similarly to Runtime if I'm not mistaken (I should have known that), you don't need anything else to run things on it, you simply can't develop on it.

Someone could extract it from the patch/game and maybe hack the system files up, worth a try.

Also the indication is that per-game is a temporary thing, so system wide support may come later.
 
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Dx12 for Win7, gee, so far there is no where to download this from, seems to be Vaporware to Me.
 

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Dx12 for Win7, gee, so far there is no where to download this from, seems to be Vaporware to Me.
WoW. Patch. It’s only for that game so far.
 
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WoW. Patch. It’s only for that game so far.
I don't know if this title is really that misleading or people can't friggin process words anymore.
it says wow patch has dx12
not w7 has dx12
 
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