News Microsoft confirms DirectX 11.2 is a Windows 8.1, Xbox One exclusive

Installed 8.1 (by way of a Virtual machine) and it's a definite improvement, should be worth switching from W7....by the time we get to Windows 9.

As for DX11.2....lol, the only reason this blackmail came about in the first place was the promise of Halo 2 being a Vista DX10 only game back in 2007, and look how well that worked.

 

"Windows 8.1, Xbox One exclusive"

And not a single **** was given.

 

So the real clever trick is the need to upgrade. Was going to anyway... can hardly be too annoyed.

Will there be hardware compliance above and beyond what is required already?

Asking the same question differently: Do I have to buy another GFX card?

 

So, who's up for a 9GB GTX790?

 

Microsoft is not doing well when it comes to common sense. Pissing off their long term customers is not a good idea.
Many of their customers, especially desktop and workstation users, just have had no reason to upgrade to Windows 8, and now they're talking about Windows 8.1, which is basically windows 8 with a start menu that doesn't function the way people are used to..

I'm not saying Metro is bad, nor am I saying no one needs it. On those small-screen convertible ultrabooks, metro is quite nice, especially if you like to have a tablet like experience. On a big non-touch display, it's awful, and trying to emulate touch gestures on such displays is mind-blowing.

DX 11.2 sounds like a minor upgrade to the original DX11 API and I'm not convinced this so called Tiling is much of a needed "technology" when we have 4GBs of ram on sub-$200 graphics cards nowadays.
I don't think it will cost much to add another 4GBs and just call it a day for "Tiling".

 

all MS are doing is the Apple model - nice upgrade to DX11 though

 

But this is good news for PC gamers... By allowing and promoting the use of this technology; and with the new consoles already being x86 - There's no reason for the delayed, crappy ports of yesteryear.

We have the same CPU architecture, can now mimic (to some extent) the console shared memory subsystem and have a fair bit more horespower in the PC form to make up for any anomalies...

We can hope, right?

 

This is not enough reason to get Windows 8, in the same way that DX10 was not enough of a reason to get Vista - 18Months+ before people think this is essential and win9 will be out by then.

In some ways, this smacks of desperation by Microsoft, at the same time it's adding fuel to the fire of discontent for the anti-Microsoft posse too.

The history of small, incremental DX patches usually mean 3 parts of Fanny Adams to most of us, if it was not for Microsoft restricting it's access by making exlcusise to xbone and it's newest OS, none of us would notice or even care.

 

Is windows 8.1 free to upgrade for Windows 7 users?

 

Is there a way to edit your post on bit-tech?

Edit: Thanks mate

 

I agree. We got lumbered with DX9 for YEARS thanks to the PS3 having to go for a non-unified design. Better to start it with the very latest and by the time we all upgrade there might be games that use it. I've not read the specifics yet, but the issue name is a derivative of DX11 so I can imagine it will be compatible with existing DX11 spec.

 

I almost shed a tear when there was no mention of OpenGL, 3dfx, and GLQuake when talking about the history of DirectX
I can see the sharing of system RAM being a bigger thing when we get Wellsburg but i don't see 11.2 causing people to rush out and buy a copy of 8.1 before that.

 

I'm with you on the hunch... but you never know... there could be something else in there that is hardware dependant. Perhaps it won't be required of the GFX card, but a minimum RAM spec... ???

If you click on forums and go to the top category "Article Discussion" you can view your comments in the forum and do all the proper editing you'd expect from a forum.

Well at least this time there is unified gfx architecture in place.

 

now here's hoping ps4 uses openGL... one of the few pieces still needed for linux gaming is openGL being more widespread. if all works out i'll never have to buy another microsoft product unless i actually WANT it.

 

Storing textures in system memory has been a feature since AGP first game along...

 

Well if the games I play work properly on Windows 8 for me, I would switch to Windows 8.1 but if they don't work properly I will stick to Windows 7.

I will however wait till 8.1 is officially released before I try it.