Intel has revealed that its upcoming ARC discrete GPUs will not natively support DirectX 9. Instead, the blue team will rely on Microsoft’s D3D9On12 interface in order to emulate DX9 games.
As Intel noted:
“12th generation Intel processor’s integrated GPU and Arc discrete GPU no longer support D3D9 natively. Applications and games based on DirectX 9 can still work through Microsoft* D3D9On12 interface.
The integrated GPU on 11th generation and older Intel processors supports DX9 natively, but they can be combined with Arc graphics cards. If so, rendering is likely to be handled by the card and not the iGPU (unless the card is disabled). Thus, the system will be using DX9On12 instead of DX9.”
Since DX9 games are really old, the upcoming ARC GPUs won’t likely have any performance issues with them. However, there might be some bugs or visual glitches due to the Microsoft D3D9On12 interface.
Intel suggests players use Microsoft Support for troubleshooting DX9 apps and games issues. So yeah, the blue team will be basically shifting the blaming to Microsoft.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Not that it mattered all that much given DgVodoo and DXVK exist, but still, Intel’s drivers efforts are more hilarious by the day.
I want Intel’s foray into the dGPU market to succeed (3 competitors would be interesting) but so far this is looking like a disaster. Their drivers are a complete joke so the question is, can they weather the storm long enough until their drivers mature or will the financial pressure be too much to handle and they’ll just call it quits?
I want Intel’s foray into the dGPU market to succeed (3 competitors would be interesting) but so far this is looking like a disaster. Their drivers are a complete joke so the question is, can they weather the storm long enough until their drivers mature or will the financial pressure be too much to handle and they’ll just call it quits?
Couldn’t agree more.
I see what you’re saying and those are valid points yet I feel they will prevail somehow. Conglomerates always do.
I see what you’re saying and those are valid points yet I feel they will prevail somehow. Conglomerates always do.
Absolutely the right thing to do!
Focus on the new DX!
To hell with DX9!
If you can’t play Max Payne, the GPU is worthless.
You should really change your username to “ConsoleRules”.
Uh, CS:GO still runs on DX9, one of the most popular games on the market nearly 10 years after its release. Intel really needs to bring its support for old games/APIs up to snuff.
Meanwhile Valve added official Vulkan support to the Linux version of CS:GO via DXVK.
Of course, doing the same for Intel users on Windows is pointless, because their Vulkan drivers on Windows are far inferior to the open-source Linux driver.
To quote the main developer of DXVK:
Intel doing good OpenGL/Vulkan drivers is a funny joke.
Also yeah – expect Intel’s “top” videocard do less than 100 FPS in CS:GO lol.
I realize Intel is new to the discrete GPU manufacturing, so, some of their shortcomings, are understandable.
However, they aren’t new to the computer market or industry as a whole, by any stretch of the word.
How do you not prepare yourselves better than this? They have all the experience in how to operate in this industry, years of collaboration with GPU manufacturers, even years of manufacturing low-end iGPUs, and “this” is their first step in to market?
Sounds like “ARC”, was handed off to some interns or something. That’s the degree of ineptitude this has been handled with.
I have 0% interest in these Intel GPU now.
Probably something like 95% of games on Steam are DX9.
Relying on an open-source translation (it’s not even a Microsoft’s tool) instead of native support is RIDICULOUS.
My experience with Intel drivers:
They hated Batman Arkham games with a passion, in both DX9 and DX11.
DXVK works on Gen9 Skylake, but doesn’t on Gen10 Ice Lake, lol.
Rocket League is/was playing in both DX9 and DX11 on both uArches.
Actually, there could be some consequences to this API translation, including higher CPU usage (since the translation is software accelerated) and potential side-effects with older games.
Not all DX9 games will suffer the same fate though. But API translation can be unreliable and buggy,
Nvidia and AMD have almost 20 years of driver experience with DirectX 9, so the DX12 emulation layer might cause performance loss if Intel opts for it.
Intel, on the contrary, only has experience with DirectX 9 on its integrated graphics/iGPU, which does not translate into the experience with its much higher-performing discrete graphics/ARC lineup.
There’s also a huge list of old games that still have a massive userbase playing them, especially the likes of CS:GO (DX9) which could explain why some users/reviewers have been running into issues when running the game on Intel Arc or Xe GPUs.
And, don’t get me started on the current state of GPU drivers from INTEL for the ARC A-series lineup. It’s buggy and messy/broken.
Uff, this goes against what PC and games conservation is about, i guess i’ll stick to Nvidia over the next decade.
DXVK is probably a better option for gamers who want good performance on DX9. Especially in games that are CPU bound like say SWTOR. You DO have to build a shader cache running around the game world, but after that performance can be stupidly better than even native DX9.
I have 0% interest in these Intel GPU now.
Probably something like 95% of games on Steam are DX9.
Relying on an open-source translation (it’s not even a Microsoft’s tool) instead of native support is RIDICULOUS.
When Intel says they rely on “open-source translation” – what they really mean is that their drivers will be “early access” and you will be the one they will expect to fix them.
Uff, this goes against what PC and games conservation is about, i guess i’ll stick to Nvidia over the next decade.
So ARC is a dumpster fire after all and the rumors of them canning the series look to be more real by the day. I mean betting on brute forcing DX9 games through software emulation is most likely alright because there has been almost none of those for the past decade and even a low end GPU can do 100+ FPS in those today – but if it’s a sign of them half-a-ing things – then what else is screwed there?
Oooooof. Combined with bad drivers and the recent rumor of the production being troubled the first gen of Intel GPUs seems doomed already. So much for giving nvidia and amd a reason to do better.
They need to fix the damn drivers first and have the GPU working stable in almost any game!