Microsoft is pleased to announce that we have ported the user mode D3D12 runtime to Windows 7.

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, where DirectX 12 was not available.Īt Microsoft, we make every effort to respond to customer feedback, so when we received this feedback from Blizzard and other developers, we decided to act on it.

This release received a warm welcome from gamers: thanks to DirectX 12 features such as multi-threading, WoW gamers experienced substantial framerate improvement. Microsoft has also stated that Windows 10 also offers several 'critical OS improvements' that allow the OS to make better use of the low-level API, which will allow DirectX 12 games to run best on the newer OS.īlizzard added DirectX 12 support for their award-winning World of Warcraft game on Windows 10 in late 2018. Moving forward, Microsoft hopes to help more game developers port their DirectX 12 games to Windows 7, stating that they are 'currently working with a few other game developers'. World of Warcraft patch 8.1.5 supports DirectX 12 on Windows 7.

World of Warcraft's DirectX 12 multi-threading enhancements allows the game to better utilise modern processors, enabling higher framerates in demanding areas of the game. This move will allow game developers to offer the benefits of DirectX 12 to users of older operating systems, with the World of Warcraft becoming the first game to benefit from the change with update 8.1.5, which allows the game to use DirectX 12 on Windows 7. Microsoft has confirmed that they have ported their DirectX 12 runtime to Windows 7, enabling developers to utilise the company's low-level API on their legacy operating system.

Windows 8.1 dx12