Mantle was seemingly well-received and performed spectacularly, but it was short lived, as Microsoft quickly released a version of DirectX that finally gave developers better access to hardware. We've seen no reason for Microsoft to bring DX12 support to older versions of Windows.Įssentially, graphics chips have become just as powerful as the main processor, taking on computing tasks other than graphics rendering.ĪMD's Mantle allowed developers to utilize this power in compatible Radeon graphics chips. To address this, AMD released its Mantle API suite, so that developers could better optimize their software for AMD chips. The drawback with DirectX before this latest release is that it still didn't provide "low-level" access to hardware components as seen with the consoles. The framework is coming to Xbox One soon, too What DX12 can do for you (and your games)
Windows 10 is slated to be just as popular, and with it arrives the latest in the DirectX series, DirectX 12.
Windows XP likely accelerated DirectX's growth, as that particular platform was highly stable and is still in use across the globe. Thus, DirectX seemingly pushed OpenGL out of the way by the time version 9 (aka DX9) hit the PC gaming scene in 2002. Microsoft's graphics API suite gained momentum over time once developers figured out it wouldn't ever go away. Windows 95 didn't have this direct line of communication – until Microsoft developed its DirectX suite of APIs.Īt first, DirectX didn't take off, as developers mostly relied on OpenGL at the time and programmed efficiently in the DOS environment. Many veteran PC gamers should remember the old days of editing the Config.sys file and the Autoexec.bat file to set up the correct settings environment so that a specific game could work correctly (IRQs and DMAs were edited too, but that's another story). At the time, most PC games ran on the old DOS platform, which allowed developers to "talk" directly to PC components such as the audio card, video card, mouse and more. And, while OpenGL is a cross-platform API, it doesn't have the advantage of being native to the Windows platform.ĭirectX first appeared in Windows 95. It rivals OpenGL, another graphics-oriented API suite introduced in 1992, that's open source and in continuous development by the Khronos Group technology consortium. Nvidia: 'DX12's focus is on enabling a dramatic increase in visual richness through a significant decrease in API-related CPU overhead.' Specifically, it's a collection of application programming interfaces, or APIs, designed to handle tasks related to rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics, rendering video and playing audio on the Windows platform. DirectX, simply put, is software developed by Microsoft that talks to a PC's hardware components.
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