The name DirectX was coined as a shorthand term for all of these APIs (the X standing in for the particular API names) and soon became the name of the collection.

Originally, the names of these APIs all began with 'Direct', such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, and so forth. Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Nevertheless, this performance improvement isn't shown on some benchmarks because, depending on the graphics card installed on the PC, DirectX 11 may behave better than the most recent version.Microsoft Windows, Windows Phone 8, Dreamcast, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, Linux (Gallium Nine) (DirectX 12 only, Exclusive to Windows Subsystem for Linux), In other words, it's easier to identify an error and for the user to notify it and try to fix it.

Improved debugging of both commands and information.

Correction of flaws that prevented us from knowing the reason why the GPU failed interpreting instructions.

CPU and GPU workloads processed separately to gain in performance.

These are the main updates that come along in this version: With the latest version of Microsoft's operating system, DirectX 12 is already preinstalled.ĭX12 is fully compatible with graphics cards supported by DX11. In other words, if you need to get hold of them for Windows 8.1, Windows 7 o Windows Vista (let's hope you've already got rid of XP), you can download DirectX 9, DirectX 10 or DirectX 11. Until the arrival of Windows 10, all the versions of this pack of APIs could be downloaded as a standalone and weren't included in the operating system by default. Thanks to the latter, Windows has become a great gaming platform, being able to put a fight up against video consoles and even beat them in terms of performance and yield. Ever since Windows 95, Microsoft has developed subsequent versions of DirectX, its collection of APIs aimed at simplifying the most complex multimedia development tasks, especially those relative to video game coding.

Directx 12 free download