Microsoft Brings (Part of) DirectX 12 to Windows 7 to Strengthen WoW's Multithreading

Even though there are only a few months left before Windows 7 no longer receives security updates, Microsoft has surprisingly carried a piece of DirectX 12 over the old ten-year operating system.

The last patch for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, version 8.1.5, includes the user-mode components of the Direct3D 12 runtime (D3D12), modified to run on Windows 7. Blizzard found that there was a "substantial improvement in the number of frames per second "following the update Sensational use D3D12, thanks to the improved support of D3D12 for distributing the work of creating graphic scenes on multiple threads. For complex environments with many objects on the screen, this multithreading can dramatically improve performance.

Microsoft insists that Windows 10 remains the best place to run D3D12 applications. This is probably true because the company has continued to update the driver model and the D3D stack to reduce the number of "problems" between high-performance graphics applications and the underlying hardware, to increase the number of number of operations that can be performed in multiple threads. Improve the programmability of GPUs (especially for compute tasks) and enable new hardware features such as accelerated ray tracing in the latest Nvidia hardware. However, it is also clear that none of these changes is absolutely essential to have most of the components of D3D12 in Windows 7. After all, the Vulkan API, which succeeded OpenGL, is available under Windows 7, with Windows 7 video drivers, and offers many of the same multithreading benefits as D3D12.

Although Microsoft does not name any names, it also states that it is working with other game developers to help them transfer their D3D12 games to Windows 7. It is not clear yet whether D3D12 on Windows 7 will be fully documented and activated for any application or special option. for some partners working with Microsoft. There is also no question of bringing this support to Windows 8.1, although most home users of this operating system probably migrated to Windows 10 anyway.

The timing of this move is extraordinary. The activation of D3D12 on Windows 7 at the beginning of Windows 10 would have made D3D12 a much more attractive target for developers, especially at the time when no one was using Windows 10 (since it was all new) and that everyone was using Windows 7 and 8. However, by publishing it now, players will have one less reason to switch to Windows 10 at the same time that Microsoft should do everything possible to encourage users to perform the game. upgrade to continue receiving security updates.