News Microsoft announces DirectX 12 at GDC 2014

My dad has the Windows 8.1 Update 1 installed currently and in the DXDiag it still shows as DirectX 11.

I reckon it will come to Windows 8/8.1 but not for a fair few months yet, or it will more than likely be a Windows 9 exclusive to get people to buy it.

 

IMO that's because Microsoft seems to make either or choices, by that i mean you either buy an Xbox, or you don't play games. You either buy Windows 8, or you don't get an OS suited for servers/desktops.

And before someone says you can still play games without an Xbox, or use Windows 8 for servers/desktops, i know you can but it seems once Microsoft makes a choice, people that don't agree with that choice get put on the back burner. Such was the case with DirectX, if you didn't want to play games on a console then you best get used to only getting major version releases of DirectX when a new console comes out, rather than the previous yearly cycle.

If you want gear that just gets on and gets the job done without a lot of handholding or necessary tweaking, you best get used to not being able to configure things to best suit your needs. It's all well and good appealing to new customers and broadening your market, but if by doing that you neglect your existing customers needs they will soon jump ship when something better comes along.

 

Seconded. Is mantle lower level than OpenGL? Dont see why Nvidia and AMD cant both focus their efforts on an open source option like OpenGL. Rather than building their own secret sauce API's.

 

Yes. OpenGL actually has some legacy faulty abstractions which do not well represent how modern hardware works. In fact, a lot of the OpenGL API could do with being scrapped and re-designed, similar to what D3D10 did. People have been asking for it for a while.

 

It seem Microsoft may have been economical with the truth when they said DX12 wont need a new GPU
http://www.techspot.com/news/56095-some-directx-12-features-will-require-next-gen-graphics-hardware.html