What is the difference between DirectX 11 and 12?
I wanted to know this because older graphics hardware that only supported DirectX 11 now supports DirectX 12 too. This was not the case between DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 (i.e. DirectX 10 hardware could not support DirectX 11 games).
What is the difference between DirectX 11 and 12? How is it possible that older hardware can now use DirectX 12?
Best Answer
The difference between DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 is a very broad topic which you can read on various sources (e.g. here and here) and I will not discuss here.
I'm assuming your real question is:
How is it possible that older hardware can now use DirectX 12?
It's quite simple really, it's because of something called Feature Levels introduced in DirectX 11.
DirectX 10 had a fixed set of mandatory requirements for the hardware to support it. Thus only new hardware could support DirectX 10 because any hardware that wanted to be DirectX 10 compatible needed to implement all of the features of DirectX 10.
With the introduction of Feature Levels, the hardware no longer needed to implement the full feature set.
For example, a graphics card compatible with DirectX 12 with Feature Level 11_0 is essentially a DirectX 11 card that may take advantage DirectX 12 features that don't require a specific graphics hardware to run (there are a lot of DirectX 12 features in this category).
You can read more on feature levels and find a complete list of them here.
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What is the difference of DirectX 11 and 12?
DX11 manages 19 fps, while DX12 is more than 60% faster at 33 fps \u2014 at the same power consumption. In both cases, the lower power consumption and higher frame rates are achieved by reducing CPU overhead \u2014 which is the main purpose of DirectX/Direct3D 12, AMD's Mantle, OpenGL NG, and Apple's Metal.Should I play DirectX 11 or 12 games?
A major difference between the two APIs is that DX12 is more low-level than DX11, meaning that DX12 gives developers more fine-grained control of how their game interacts with your CPU and GPU. This is a double-edged sword: DX12 comes with fewer guardrails but gives developers more power and flexibility.Should I get DirectX 12?
Normally, if the current operating system you're running is Windows 10, you don't need to download DirectX 12, because it is an integral part of Windows 10. You can follow the instructions below to check which version of DirectX is installed on your PC: On your keyboard, press the Windows logo key and type dxdiag.DirectX 11 vs DirectX 12 - Is DX12 that good?
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Tim Gouw, cottonbro, Ron Lach, Варвара Курочкина