Intel Arc GPUs to Drop Native DirectX 9 Support for Emulation

pcmag.com:

To run older PC games, Intel's upcoming Arc graphics cards are going to rely on emulation rather than native support for DirectX 9. 

Intel quietly mentioned the DirectX 9 emulation in a company support document, which users(Opens in a new window) on Twitter noticed over the weekend. 

The document notes that Intel is dropping native DirectX9 support for both integrated GPUs in Intel's 12th Generation Core “Alder Lake” processors and discrete Arc GPUs. Instead, the company will emulate DirectX 9 support through Microsoft’s open-source D3D9On12(Opens in a new window) interface.   

This interface can essentially convert the graphics commands in DirectX 9—which was originally released two decades ago—to DirectX 12, the latest version of the gaming API. It also means Intel is offloading any DirectX 9 game optimization to Microsoft.  

“Since DirectX is property of and is sustained by Microsoft, troubleshooting of DX9 apps and games issues require promoting any findings to Microsoft Support(Opens in a new window) so they can include the proper fixes in their next update of the operating system and the DirectX APIs,” the support doc adds. 

The news isn’t a great sign for Intel’s Arc line when it comes to older games. Earlier this month, the company admitted its first gaming GPUs will struggle to offer high performance on some older PC titles that run on DirectX 11 and DirectX 9 due to a lack of software optimizations. 

Intel essentially needs more time to tweak numerous older PC games to work well with the Arc GPUs. However, the support document signals that Intel may have decided to ignore DirectX 9 titles in favor of optimizing DirectX 11 games. 

We reached out to Intel for comment and will update the story if we hear back.