Intel taps Microsoft to take care of older DX9 game support with its Arc GPUs

pcgamer.com:

Intel has officially removed native DX9 support from its Arc and 12th Gen graphics hardware. You might now be wondering where that leaves older games in your library that still utilise the ageing API. There's nothing to fear, Intel isn't ending DX9 support completely, it's instead differing bug testing and support to Microsoft and its D3D9On12 emulation layer.

Intel is ditching its native DX9 driver and will call on Microsoft's D3D9On12(opens in new tab) mapping layer when required. This layer essentially takes DX9 commands and translates them to DX12 commands, thus cutting out a whole stack of driver optimisations that Intel would have otherwise needed to build for itself.

Think of it in a similar vein to how Valve's Proton compatibility layer converts DirectX commands to Vulkan API commands, in order to make gaming on the Steam Deck(opens in new tab) a whole lot simpler.

«12th generation Intel processor's integrated GPU and Arc discrete GPU no longer support D3D9 natively,» a support page on the Intel website(opens in new tab) says (via Tom's Hardware(opens in new tab)). Applications and games based on DirectX 9 can still work through Microsoft* D3D9On12 interface."

This should work in Intel's favour, as the company has admitted it is struggling with APIs that are older than the more recent DX12 and Vulkan APIs on its latest Arc GPUs.

«It's just going to be a labor of love for forever making DX11 titles better and better and better. And DX9 as well,» says Intel's Tom Peterson. «But then Vulkan and DX12 titles are just, in general, going to be more optimised for Intel GPUs as we start to have a larger footprint.»

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