Intel 12th generation CPUs with integrated Xe / Arc GPU graphics cards drop native hardware DirectX 9 support in favour of Microsoft DirectX 12 emulation

Native DX9 hardware support has officially disappeared from the Xe integrated graphics solution and the A-Series Arc Alchemist discrete GPU in Intel's 12th generation CPUs. Intel says that all support for DirectX 9 will be moved to DirectX 12 emulation mode.

Intel's 12th generation CPUs with integrated Xe / Arc GPU graphics drop native hardware DirectX 9 support in favour of Microsoft DirectX 12 emulation

Emulation will run on Microsoft's "D3D9On12" open source conversion layer. The conversion is done by sending 3D DirectX 9 graphics commands to the D3D9On12 layer instead of directly to the D3D9 graphics driver. Once the D3D9On12 layer has received the commands from the D3D9 API, it converts all commands into D3D12 API calls. So basically, D3D9On12 will act entirely as a GPU driver, rather than an actual GPU driver for Intel.

Microsoft says that this emulation process has become a relatively high-performance implementation of DirectX 9. As a result, performance is comparable to native DirectX 9 hardware support.

Therefore, this change to DX9 by Intel seems to be a very good move. Intel can now shift driver development resources to DirectX 11 optimisation (which is currently poor). In addition, Intel will not suffer a performance impact as a result, DX9 optimisation is completely "outsourced" to Microsoft.

According to Microsoft, it will be possible to watch how D3D9On12 performs and see if Nvidia and AMD follow the same path as Intel. Nvidia and AMD also have nearly 20 years of experience with DirectX 9 drivers, and in comparison, the DX12 emulation layer may experience a performance loss.

Previously, Intel only had a DirectX 9 experience on integrated graphics cards, and it did not translate to a higher-performance solo experience. As such, there are real benefits to Intel moving to emulation on Arc graphics cards worldwide.