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DX12 news-Windows 10 upgrade free for owners of Windows 7 and 8.1

Epic C&P - http://www.pcworld.com/article/2873...nt-require-a-new-graphics-card-after-all.html

Hey, gamers! Do. Not. Panic.

You won’t actually need a new graphics card to run Microsoft’s new DirectX 12 API, which will be baked into Windows 10 later this year. Microsoft has formally confirmed that modern GPUs will indeed work with DX12 afterall.

The PC gaming site Rock Paper Shotgun threw people into panic mode when it reported that current GPUs—including cards purchased within the past few months—would not work with DX12.

Microsoft told PCWorld that the initial reports were incorrect.

“Microsoft’s recent demonstration of a few new Windows 10 game experiences powered by DirectX12 has led some people to ask what specific hardware will be supported by the DirectX12 API,” Kam VedBrat, Microsoft’s Group Manager for DirectX, told me via email.

“While we are not yet ready to detail everything related to DirectX12, we can share that we are working closely with all of our hardware partners to help ensure that most modern PC gaming hardware will work well with DirectX12, including; nVidia’s Maxwell, Kepler and Fermi-based GPUs, Intel’s 4th generation (and newer) Core processors and AMD’s Graphics Core Next (GCN) based GPUs. We’ll have more to share about DirectX12 at GDC in March.”

What’s the fuss?
Rock Paper Shotgun’s original report cited Mike Ybarra, Partner Director of Program Management, Xbox Platform, speaking at Wednesday’s Windows 10 event. The site apparently asked if gamers would need new graphics cards to take advantage of DirectX 12.

“To get the full benefits of DX12, the answer is yes,” Ybarra told the reporter. “There will be DX 11.1 cards that take advantage of a lot of the driver and software tech that we’re bringing in Windows 10, but if you want the full benefits of DX12, you’re going to need a DX12 card.“

As expected, the report got gamers chattering about whether the cards they expected to work with DirectX 12 wouldn’t, in fact, work with DirectX 12.

Microsoft Intel DirectX12 DX12 powerINTEL
DirectX 12 promises more multi-threading support in games and incredible power savings too.

DirectX12 promises far greater performance, similar to AMD’s API Mantle, thanks to a better threading model and far better battery life on mobile parts. For months, Nvidia and AMD have been saying their current DirectX11 cards would support DirectX12.

When reached by PCWorld, Nvidia officials said there was no change in their statements on GPUs that support DirectX 12.

AMD officials also said nothing had changed. “All GCN-based graphics cards from AMD are going to support DirectX12,” an official told PCWorld.

radeonr9290x
Yes, the GCN-based R9 290X will support DirectX 12

With all that said, it’s wise to read between the lines here. Both AMD and nVidia have sparred with each other over support of Microsoft’s APIs. In 2012, in fact, AMD took a swipe at nVidia in a blog post titled, ”Yes, AMD has FULL DirectX11 11.1 support.”

AMD got into the nuances of the various levels of feature support in the API, and claimed nVidia didn’t support all the features it was supporting. In the end, though, few gamers ever actually noticed any differences. The only people who cared were those who like to watch the two graphics companies duke it out.

It’s possible the same thing will occur again with DirectX 12. Perhaps today’s cards will support DirectX 12.0, but for DirectX 12.1 support, you may indeed new hardware. This was intimated in an interview nVidia’s Tony Tamasi had with the TechReport.com last March:

”DirectX 12 will indeed make lower-level abstraction available (but not mandatory—there will be backward-compatibility with DX11) on existing hardware. However, Tamasi explained that DirectX 12 will introduce a set of new features in addition to the lower-level abstraction, and those features will require new hardware. In his words, Microsoft “only teased” at some of those additions this week, and a “whole bunch more” are coming.”
That same report, however, came to the same conclusion that’s being echoed by the two major graphics vendors: that today’s hardware will give gamers the parts that really matter in terms of performance and multi-thread support.

Why this matters: Gamers—like everyone else—like to stretch their budgets. Getting more life out of a graphics card means you’ll have money to buy games. If DirectX 12 were to come out mandating new hardware beyond what was already on sale today, a mass gnashing of teeth would occur.
 
Seems only couple of people in here are worried about the smoke and mirrors from MS?

W10 going to be service, and here we will be that it will have a charge similar to Xbox services.
Those who say "MS will never do it", hell MS is doing it with the current Xbox even if it's competitor PS4 (PSN) comes free of charge. They do it with office 365 when you can have open/free solutions that imho are better.

MS is here to make money and isn't a charity. If they offer free upgrade to W7/W8 users, means they plan to get that money somehow.

And their wording is clear that the upgrade is free for the first year. After that cough up the monthly/yearly sub. With your W7/8 key invalidated not been able to go back.

Also do not forger any DX12 games going to come out 2017+, with a .net framework that from it's 4.6 iteration has native support for Linux, Android, iOS & OSX.
And of course their DX11 even DX9 version still there to play them.

I say is time to support Mantle and stick the finger/fingers up to MS.

And something to remind the "old" and inform the youngsters around...

When MS saw a threat to their OS back in the 90s with Glide and OpenGL, they moved the heavens to force everyone to use DX, which was sub par compared to the other two at that period. And then when they killed the competition, they almost stopped developing it. Having forced everyone using DX and Windows.

Now with Mantle as serious alternative, opening the path for most of us to switch to Linux, and SteamOS in the making, they woke up from their slumber trying to rush a tech out (DX12) to kill it before they make a foothold.
 
H god. No it's nothing like that.
The services are Xbox movies, Xbox videos, one drive, office 365 etc.
The upgrade is free and permanent they have said this.
The offer is only available for 1year, after that you wile have to pay.

So your wall of text is nonsense.
 
Very good from Microsoft I say and I will be switching, even though I am happy with W8.1. It's not often companies like MS give something for nothing but they clearly are this time.
 
Panos said:
Seems only couple of people in here are worried about the smoke and mirrors from MS?

W10 going to be service, and here we will be that it will have a charge similar to Xbox services.
Those who say "MS will never do it", hell MS is doing it with the current Xbox even if it's competitor PS4 (PSN) comes free of charge. They do it with office 365 when you can have open/free solutions that imho are better.

MS is here to make money and isn't a charity. If they offer free upgrade to W7/W8 users, means they plan to get that money somehow.

And their wording is clear that the upgrade is free for the first year. After that cough up the monthly/yearly sub. With your W7/8 key invalidated not been able to go back.

Also do not forger any DX12 games going to come out 2017+, with a .net framework that from it's 4.6 iteration has native support for Linux, Android, iOS & OSX.
And of course their DX11 even DX9 version still there to play them.

I say is time to support Mantle and stick the finger/fingers up to MS.

And something to remind the "old" and inform the youngsters around...

When MS saw a threat to their OS back in the 90s with Glide and OpenGL, they moved the heavens to force everyone to use DX, which was sub par compared to the other two at that period. And then when they killed the competition, they almost stopped developing it. Having forced everyone using DX and Windows.

Now with Mantle as serious alternative, opening the path for most of us to switch to Linux, and SteamOS in the making, they woke up from their slumber trying to rush a tech out (DX12) to kill it before they make a foothold.
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Your information is wrong.

MS Charge for Xbox Live Gold on Xbox One and Sony charge for PSN+ on PS4, BOTH of which are now needed to play online multiplayer games.

Previously MS used to charge a yearly sub for Xbox Gold on Xbox 360 whereas Sony did not on PS3, but the Xbox 360 O/S and matchmaking were so much better than the PS3 experience, that people didn't mind paying it anyway

Microsoft have already clarified that Windows 10 is ABSOLUTELY free for anybody that upgrades from Win 7/8.1 in the first 12 months and there will be no subscription fee after this date.

I remember Windows 95 and Direct X....people didn't really start using DX until about 2001 at which point it was up to version 8. Until then the OpenGL and Glide wrapper offered much better performance.

Tomshardware said:
A turning point was reached with DirectX 8, released in 2001. For the first time, Microsoft’s API did more than just copy from SGI. It actually introduced innovations of its own like support for vertex and pixel shaders. SGI, whose main source of revenue was the sale of expensive 3D workstations, was in a bad position, having failed to foresee that the explosion of 3D cards for gamers would prompt ATI and Nvidia to move into the professional market with prices so low (due to economies of scale) that SGI couldn’t keep up. OpenGL’s development was also handicapped by bitter disputes among its proponents. Since the ARB—the group in charge of ratifying the API’s development—included many different, competing companies, it was hard to reach agreement on the features to be added to the API. Instead, each company promoted its own agenda. Conversely, Microsoft was working solely with ATI and Nvidia, using its weight to cast a deciding vote if there was disagreement.
Click to expand...
 
Panos said:
...
And something to remind the "old" and inform the youngsters around...

When MS saw a threat to their OS back in the 90s with Glide and OpenGL, they moved the heavens to force everyone to use DX, which was sub par compared to the other two at that period. And then when they killed the competition, they almost stopped developing it. Having forced everyone using DX and Windows.
....
Click to expand...

OpenGL killed itself, wasn't MS's fault that they sat around talking and rearchitecting and delivering squat. To say DX was poor would be fair, but worse than the alternatives? Not even close. You could actually run games on DX, which is why it won. OpenGL had basically no compatibility due to it's decision that so much should be optional, so while it may be faster running a particular routine on one specific card you couldn't even run that routine at all on another card - while DX would run it, but slowly on other cards.

Compatibility has been both MS's key to success and their achilles heel. It makes them much more useful to businesses than even free software, as staff time costs much more money than licences, but also makes their products bloated and slow-changing.

As for the rest of your post... total conjecture at best.

For me I'm undecided if I'll upgrade yet. What I have now works for me so I'm happy enough with it, but can't stay on it forever. I have not enjoyed win 8 as some hardware own doesn't have stable drivers for it which, while not MS's fault, still makes me dislike using it. Win10 would likely have the same issue (as would pick your version of 'nix etc)
 
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hominid said:
Although free for the first year can be read two ways, is it free upgrade only for the first year or is the upgrade free for the first year then goes to a subscription model for instance? I know MS would love everyone to have to subscribe to their OS..
Click to expand...

The upgrade will only be free in the first 12 months after release and will last for the "supported lifetime of the device." Microsoft said the new OS will run on PCs, tablets, phones, and a new device to be announced later today.
Click to expand...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/0...0_away_free_for_windows_7_81_and_phone_users/

just think of it as a offer which is free. the offer lasts for one year. if you don't take the offer in time then you've missed out on getting it free and you'll have to pay....

a bit like win8 offer when it was £25 to upgrade for i think for the first 3 months.
 
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ok, so i had Win 7 which may or may not have been legit, but i then took advantage of the £25 upgrade offer. I installed Win 8 ok, but 8.1 gave me all sorts of issues (namely certain updates that royally messed my system ie unable to boot etc..) - so i went back to win 7 which is stable. But i do have a valid Win 8 key (presuming its an upgrade one for win 7 - 8).
So do you reckon i will have to install win 8 - then 8.1 update to then go to 10??? - I really hope not as 8.1 does not like my system for some reason...
 
wingnutta said:
ok, so i had Win 7 which may or may not have been legit, but i then took advantage of the £25 upgrade offer. I installed Win 8 ok, but 8.1 gave me all sorts of issues (namely certain updates that royally messed my system ie unable to boot etc..) - so i went back to win 7 which is stable. But i do have a valid Win 8 key (presuming its an upgrade one for win 7 - 8).
So do you reckon i will have to install win 8 - then 8.1 update to then go to 10??? - I really hope not as 8.1 does not like my system for some reason...
Click to expand...


You can now download the Win8.1 installer off the MS website for activation with Win8 key to avoid the whole Win8 + update horror -> Win 8.1 slog.

Could try and see if it also works in your case with the upgrade key.

edit: Just rethought it, they would prob make it so you could go direct Win7->Win10.
 
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