Direct X12 | What it Means for Gaming

I'm not sure how many gamers out there read TIME Magazine. Believe it or not, I actually used to subscribe up until about a year ago, but they produce more magazines a month than I ever have time to read , so sadly I had to cancel my subscription. I do like to peruse their website from time to time however since I do like them as a semi-viable news source. Because of that, I found this a few days ago when it was first published, and I thought it might be interesting to reflect upon/translate.

For starts, who here liked Windows 8?

No one who isn't in a straight jacket is going to raise their hand at that question, and technically, neither can the people in the straight jackets for...well, obvious reasons! It's like finding out someone you're really close to prefers Internet Explorer as their web browser - you IMMEDIATELY want to disassociate from them because no one worth knowing is that insane!

But I digress. Here's a few things I've heard that make me breathe a little easier about Windows 10.

1. The Start Button is back. This really explains itself.
2. DirectX12
3. It's Free

Now from a gamer's perspective, DirectX12 is the seller here. According to what the article says, DirectX12 can now talk to all of your cores can communicate with your graphics card at the same time. Apparently, this optimization has displayed anywhere between 85%-300% performance boosts. That's unfathomable in my mind, but I'm eager to see it in action.

Granted, none of this will be visible unless you have games written specifically for DirectX12, writes Matt Peckham, and that will obviously take some time. 

Another tidbit: supposedly the older your PC, the better it will perform with DirectX12. There's no actual details as to how or why just yet, and again this is only with DirectX12 compatible games, but that's something a lot of people should be excited about, myself included as I'm still dwelling on a i5 core. 

Because DirectX12 is utilizing all of the cores in your PC, it's also going to use a lot less power, therefore limiting the likelihood of burnout during a gaming session. I'm not really sure if this happens a lot anymore, since most people playing games that often have some pretty spiffy gaming PCs so as to prevent such things, but hey, I'm sure there's a few gamers that will be really happy to hear about this!

I'm going to keep this blog short so that I'm not hit with plagiarism, so if you want to read the full article check it out here. It's not very lengthy, but fairly informative. They've also released a few more articles about Windows 10 in general, so if you're really itching for some news on Microsoft's next OS, this might be the place to be.

Windows 10 was released this past Wednesday and will be available free to download for the next year to those who already own Windows 7 and Windows 8, so get it while it's hot!