12th Gen Intel Core iGPUs and Arc Discrete GPUs Lose Native Support for DirectX 9

[Tsing]

Intel has shared a new support document that can confirm the iGPUs in its 12th Gen Core processors, as well as its new Arc discrete GPUs, no longer support DirectX 9 (DX9) natively.

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[Ditchinit]

DX9 had a seemingly everlasting life in game development. By not supporting DX9, Intel has closed the door on a large base of older, yet still functional and fun games that require it. I get it that they want to keep moving forward, but if they alienate a good chunk of the existing market, they're not going to gain market share.

Are they purposely trying to harpoon their success?

 

[Brian_B]

Not a great look for certain.

Apparently DX9 support is being provided by a Microsoft-written DX9-to-DX12 emulation layer.

If you have enough brute force power, it'll work. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of optimization stuff lost in emulation though, particularly all those native driver efficiency tricks....

Yeah this doesn't make sense. Sure, not many games are being written today that are only DX9 level support, but the back catalog of games that do is ~huge~, and includes a lot of very popular titles still played today.

 

[Stoly]

Its hard to know what the performance penalty would be, but given that pretty much all DX9 only titles are over 5yo now, I'd say that it won't be that big of a deal. I mean who wants to run AvP, Splinter Cell or Assasins Creed at over 300 fps. Now, if they wanted to go the extra mile, they could develop a DX12 renderer for UE3, that would cover a lot of games.

 

[Denpepe]

DX9 had a seemingly everlasting life in game development. By not supporting DX9, Intel has closed the door on a large base of older, yet still functional and fun games that require it. I get it that they want to keep moving forward, but if they alienate a good chunk of the existing market, they're not going to gain market share.

Are they purposely trying to harpoon their success?

The problem intel is facing is that AMD and Nvidia made all those optimisations over a lot of years, intel can't just go and create optimisations for hundreds or thousands of games overnight, for DX 11 alone it is going to take them a long time to even add the most popular and most played games to run without issues.

Intel does seem to have a solid DX12 implementation so it might be a good idea to make use of that as much as they can where it makes the most sense.

I feel exited to see a new player in the GPU segment, and while I know it wont be easy, but for the sake of the market and our wallets I hope they will eventually be a valid option for gamers.

If intel fails or abandons at this point, I think it's unlikely we will see another player anytime soon.

 

[Brian_B]

The problem intel is facing is that AMD and Nvidia made all those optimisations over a lot of years, intel can't just go and create optimisations for hundreds or thousands of games overnight, for DX 11 alone it is going to take them a long time to even add the most popular and most played games to run without issues.

I agree with this; however:

Intel has had DX9 on their IGP for ... years.

Now, I grant you, IGP isn't exactly the same bag as a bigger discrete chip. But they have all known this bigger discrete chip is coming... for years. At least 5 years, going by their own public announcement.

If their driver team can't start pulling together a unified driver architecture in that time, let alone at least a driver, then there really isn't much more to say I don't think.

You can also say, well, they didn't have silicon to write a driver for until just recently. That's probably true. But you know they have working design models in software, and while it will miss a lot of nuance about a physical chip - it'll let you write a driver. Especially if you have a unified driver architecture.

Intel is only the #1 maker of graphics chips, in the world. You'd think they would have gotten this right.

I really want some competition too. But I just can't stop the face palms that come from every bit of news that comes out recently -- I really can't believe this clown show is coming from a company like Intel. I had faith they would at least ship something -- probably overpriced and maybe hitting mid-tier performance, but something. We don't have ~anything~, and the news just goes from bad to worse.