Intel Arc Graphics and 12th Gen iGPUs: DirectX 9 support via API translation only

Advocates of aging games will have to make adjustments as long as they use iGPUs from Intel’s 12th Gen CPUs or discrete Arc Alchemist GPUs. Because these graphics products no longer support DirectX 9, which older games and applications still rely on. Intel has now reported on this on its website.

Reach your goal with Microsoft’s API translation

However, games and applications with DirectX 9 can still be run with the graphics solutions mentioned, because Intel refers to Microsoft’s interface “D3D9on12“, which can translate D3D9 API commands into D3D12. Here, D3D9on12 acts as a kind of standalone GPU driver instead of Intel’s actual driver. According to Microsoft, this emulation process has become a relatively powerful implementation of DirectX 9. As a result, performance should be almost as good, if not as good, as native DirectX 9 hardware support.

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Intel also explains that older 11th Gen processors support DirectX 9 natively, but they can also be paired with discrete Arc graphics cards. In this case, the system should use D3D9on12 unless the graphics card is disabled and the iGPU is used. If errors occur during the API translation, Intel asks users to contact Microsoft support, since DirectX is the property of the Redmond company and Intel cannot provide any help for this.

API translation has its pros and cons. On the one hand, Intel could now use resources for driver development with DirectX 11 optimizations. The manufacturer should not suffer any loss of performance because the optimizations for DirectX 9 are “forwarded” to Microsoft. On the other hand, the API translation could also have consequences, such as higher CPU utilization, since the procedure is software-accelerated, or possible side effects in older games. It will be interesting to see if Nvidia and AMD will follow a similar path.

Source: intel