Report: DirectX 11.1 to be Exclusive to Windows 8

Post by Dan @ 12:00pm 13/11/12 | 10 Comments

A report on Neowin has discovered an old post by a Microsoft employee from back in September, that explains that the next iteration of the company's DirectX framework DirectX 11.1 is in development for Windows 8 only, with no plans to make it available for Windows 7 or other older Windows versions.

DirectX 11.1 is part of Windows 8, just like DirectX 11 was part of Windows 7. DirectX 11 was made available for Vista (bing it), but at this point there is no plan for DirectX 11.1 to be made available on Windows 7.

VG247 speculates that it's probably not worth PC gamers getting too worked up about, as the feature-set of 11.1 isn't a huge step up from 11.

windows 8 direct x microsoft

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mental
Posted 12:13pm 13/11/12

Not a huge thing, directx 11.1 is more a tidy up and you need to use win8 to take advantage of the direct2d improvements anyway (text and images are a tiny bit smoother when scrolling is the only effect i notice and it's only slight).

It does mean the major bump into 12 probably won't be added to seven either, as to whether that is important depends on the next xbox I guess.

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WirlWind
Posted 12:21pm 13/11/12

Yay microsoft, pissing over the people who don't want to be forced into a s***** OS by locking out future games purely for profit *sigh*

In before all games in the future are forced to only play on windows 8 to get certification.

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Hogfather
Posted 12:24pm 13/11/12

^ what a dramatic overreaction

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Khel
Posted 12:28pm 13/11/12

I doubt all games are going to suddenly use DX 11.1, look how long its taking for DX11, or even DX10 to catch on, a lot of stuff still uses DX9 even. But yeah, if new consoles come out and use a new version of DX thats only available on Windows 8, then we might start seeing a switch, just cos of portability.

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Obes
Posted 12:33pm 13/11/12

I get what they are trying to do with Windows 8 ... but for a fair chunk of the existing Windows user base Windows 8 is not right yet. I am not sure why they removed functionality and forced new s***** work flows on to people.

Maybe SP1 or maybe if it really doesn't catch on a new iteration (like Win7 was to vista).

It's still dumb that the best MS file search interface is XP.

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deadlyf
Posted 12:38pm 13/11/12

I'd be surprised if the 720 wasn't DX11.1 compatible, it seems to me that Windows 8 will be a part of all of Microsofts future applications including the next Xbox.

I doubt it'd be a problem for Windows 7 users though in terms of game compatibility, most games are still DX9 compatible and I'm sure game companies won't go out of their way to limit their market and make games incompatible with DX11 machines.

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Darkhawk
Posted 05:07pm 13/11/12

Meh, I'd rather the better performance of Windows 7. I was thinking of "upgrading" to Win 8 until I saw benchmark tests were lower than Win 7.

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mental
Posted 05:26pm 13/11/12

Every new release of windows benchmarks a little lower than the last at release, windows 8 has a smaller gap and is faster for some things than usual?

last edited by mental at 17:26:44 13/Nov/12

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copuis
Posted 05:24pm 13/11/12

Yay microsoft, pissing over the people who don't want to be forced into a s***** OS by locking out future games purely for profit *sigh*In before all games in the future are forced to only play on windows 8 to get certification.

yeah, cause it is sooooo expensive, oh wait

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Khel
Posted 05:57pm 13/11/12

PC games don't require certification anyway, certification is just something you have to go through for console games.

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