Intel Xe/Arc GPUs have dropped DirectX 9 native support
Previously, Intel admitted that the Intel Arc brand Alchemist (DG2) discrete graphics card had driver optimization problems. The optimization of DirectX 12 games is the most in place, and Vulkan games are also good, but DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 games are much worse. Intel is committed to continuous optimization and believes that this is a long and difficult job.
Recently, Intel said in a note that it will remove the native support for DirectX 9 on the Xe integrated display and Arc graphics card in the 12th generation Core processor, and move to DirectX 12 emulation mode in the future, running on an open source translation layer Microsoft calls “D3D9On12”. This means that DirectX 9 graphics commands are not sent directly to the graphics driver, but all commands are translated into D3D12 API calls.
According to Microsoft, this emulation process has become a relatively high-performance implementation of DirectX 9, in theory almost as good as native DirectX 9 hardware support. This seems like a good option for Intel to focus resources on driver development and shift it to DirectX 11 optimization. However, this method is not completely without side effects, such as CPU usage may increase, because the conversion and compilation process requires software acceleration.
