Windows 7 is just the better OS , EOL means literally nothing for the home user i personally even have the Windows Updates off and I'm installing updates manually only when I see them fit to do something positive. From all the devices at home 2 PCs and 3 notebooks i have only on one notebook with something different than Win7 it is Win 8.1 cause it is more touch screen friendly that is all.Given the fact through how many troubles I've went at my previous and my current work with the Win10 updates I'll never do this to my self at home. People are talking about a security well i have a nice and secure router on my home network and anything suspicious is downloaded and checked in a virtual machine. Last time I got infected any of my PCs was my Windows Me computer in 2001 from a diskette I gave to a friend with bots for CS he returned me the diskette infected with CIH virus a nasty thingie. I'm sure win 10 has its real pluses in the corporate environment like a better rules and account management in the domain environment but for home i don't see why i would install this monster only to play some games , have some work on excel,word , browse and watch movies , make some casual stuff on 3DS Max and script for fun in UE4 all of this apps are OS neutral regarding everything from Vista till Windows 10. So everyone asking why there are still people with win 7 i prefer the old trusty hammer than the stamping robot.

Micro$oft at it again...

I mean obviously if you take proper precautions you can continue to use non-supported OS's and hardware.. the US nuclear arsenal runs on old IBM machines with floppy disks. That being said the reason why people/companies push for users to upgrade is because the vast majority are not taking proper precautions - they are just continuing to use their Windows/old laptop as they always have.. inevitably those machines end up infected and used for botnets or whatever. I'd rather everyone universally agree and promote upgrading, even if it's not entirely necessary as it promotes a safer ecosystem overall.

Denial:

I mean obviously if you take proper precautions you can continue to use non-supported OS's and hardware.. the US nuclear arsenal runs on old IBM machines with floppy disks. That being said the reason why people/companies push for users to upgrade is because the vast majority are not taking proper precautions - they are just continuing to use their Windows/old laptop as they always have.. inevitably those machines end up infected and used for botnets or whatever. I'd rather everyone universally agree and promote upgrading, even if it's not entirely necessary as it promotes a safer ecosystem overall.

Unfortunately this is only partially true. Having an updated OS is normally safer then one oudated but what´s the point when everything else is "filled" with vulnerabilities that most of them we don´t even know about??? Even hardware is full of vulnerabilities, some of them really hard to patch, others impossible... And to make things even "better", even the most recent software is riddled with bugs and vulnerabilities, including essential drivers and lastest versions of OSes, like W10... So wonder how much damage is an outdated OS like W7 is going to make in the current situation...

H83:

Unfortunately this is only partially true. Having an updated OS is normally safer then one oudated but what´s the point when everything else is "filled" with vulnerabilities that most of them we don´t even know about??? Even hardware is full of vulnerabilities, some of them really hard to patch, others impossible... And to make things even "better", even the most recent software is riddled with bugs and vulnerabilities, including essential drivers and lastest versions of OSes, like W10... So wonder how much damage is an outdated OS like W7 is going to make in the current situation...

Statistically an updated OS over a wide spread of users is going to be safer, obviously directly for those users, but for other users due to "herd immunity". Those other vulnerabilities will be exploited regardless - as long as the number of attack vectors is smaller (again it's measured to be) it's better.

karma777police:

Great. I can go back to Windows 7. Next step..someone make full DX12 install for Windows 7.

There is no install, the DLL must be located in the game/application root folder to work and not in system32, otherwise it will be treated like the Windows 10 runtime, and the application will fail to run.

Astyanax:

and we all know how this is rubbish, no benchmark ever finds 10 to have a significant improvement over 7 or 8.

It's not only about magically performance improvement on older behaviour and features, but new behaviour and features.

Alessio1989:

There is no install, the DLL must be located in the game/application root folder to work and not in system32, otherwise it will be treated like the Windows 10 runtime, and the application will fail to run.

Since you seem to have a decent understanding of the under workings of DX - how long/difficult do you think it was for Microsoft to do this port, given that they didn't have to actually update Windows 7 kernel with WDDM/DXGI, etc.

Denial:

Since you seem to have a decent understanding of the under workings of DX - how long/difficult do you think it was for Microsoft to do this port, given that they didn't have to actually update Windows 7 kernel with WDDM/DXGI, etc.

Most of difficulties were related to the different memory management model provided by WDDM 1.1 (you cannot just bring WDDM 2.x under 7 without deep kernel changes), plus older version of DXGI (different presentation models). Those are "half secrets" (I have some old docs but they are under NDA), Max McMullen (Microsoft) said something about it on B3D forum: https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/2062153/ This is also why "emulated" memory residency under Windows 7 needs a different and more careful approach than Windows 10, and why there is a little different API for presentation mode. Of course Microsoft is a company, and push Windows 10 with DirectX 12 was also a commercial move (just remember that Windows 7 is from 2009).

Alessio1989:

Most of difficulties were related to the different memory management model provided by WDDM 1.1 (you cannot just bring WDDM 2.x under 7 without deep kernel changes), plus older version of DXGI (different presentation models). Those are "half secrets" (I have some old docs but they are under NDA), Max McMullen (Microsoft) said something about it on B3D forum: https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/2062153/ This is also why "emulated" memory residency under Windows 7 needs a different and more careful approach than Windows 10, and why there is a little different API for presentation mode.

Thanks for posting that - this quote here basically answers all the questions from earlier in the thread: @schmidtbag - This might clarify some of your questions

There’s a measurable population of gamers in some markets that likely won’t get off of Windows 7 in time for this next wave of titles and engines on low-level APIs. D3D12 on Windows 7 is what my team did to assist developers & publishers with the engineering cost and addressable market tradeoffs they were making. Developers get to focus more time/spend less effort on making their engines & titles work better on D3D12, publishers have a reduced cost for reaching their market on Windows, gamers who are stuck on Windows 7 still get to play the games with the limits imposed by that OS, and Windows 10 gamers get a larger number of games that can more fully exploit their hardware. All together it was a solution my team was really happy to make possible. The system constraints in Windows 7, as well as the well aged properties of the ecosystem (just think of all the random drivers & software hooking into bizarre internal methods that were never designed to be touched outside of OS code), are why we’re doing a title by title rollout at first. We need to make sure the experience is a quality one across users, developers, and publishers. Max McMullen Development Manager Compute, Graphics, and AI (yes, we chose the group name in that order because the acronym was funny to us) Microsoft

Alessio1989:

It's not only about magically performance improvement on older behaviour and features, but new behaviour and features.

Performance is everything.

Clanger:

I enjoy reading posts by people who know their onions even though its all way above me but why now on an os they will eol in the very near future. why not just go all out on windows 10, fix the issues that affect gaming rather than pacify those gamers who vehemently stick to 7? it smellls like "stick withus peeps, we are working on something" but they aint telling us what. a gamer edition of 10?

You say why now, but the fact is DX12 was built to work on 7 and even 8 from the beginning, the why so late is simply a matter of market share.

Astyanax:

Performance is everything. You say why now, but the fact is DX12 was built to work on 7 and even 8 from the beginning, the why so late is simply a matter of market share.

So, talking about performance of graphics: DXGI versions improvements of 8, 8.1 and 10 reduced frame presentation latency, both windowed (8/8.1/10) and fullscreen (10). You can say this is not important, but a single frame bltbit copy less or the direct DWM composition (all things Windows 7 kernel lacks), in a 60 FPS game scenario, are ~17 ms less latency. This is more what a high-end monitor provides (having lower response time) against a budget monitor. This also mean better input handling. This is also faster and responsive frame buffer context switch when switching to an application to another. All things you cannot show with a damn stupid "pop-geeks" FPS bar graphs.

None of those things are even perceivable 😎

Astyanax:

None of those things are even perceivable 😎

Those things have more impact on gaming than any gaming input device or gaming monitor. They have also more impact on most driver quirks if correctly handled by developers.

Well it work on windows 8.1? What is needed for it to function, just combination of video card driver and game that supports it or is there a specific KB update that implements it?

KissSh0t:

Well it work on windows 8.1? What is needed for it to function, just combination of video card driver and game that supports it or is there a specific KB update that implements it?

Windows 7 SP1, updated drivers, Windows 7 DX12 version DLL in the executable folders and updated and proper code paths in the game/application. You cannot just run a DX12 game or application simply on Windows 7 just putting the DLL in the game folder, it will fail.

KissSh0t:

Well it work on windows 8.1?

It doesn't, theres a artificial restriction at play atm, there is no technical reason it can't run on 8.x but the 12on7 compatible d3d12 binary is built for 7's UCRT, it would need to be built to use 8's C runtime. the binary presently crashes with a corrupted address space on 8.

Not a bad idea by Microsoft since there are some gamers out there who are still using 7.

RealNC:

Maybe they'll extend it. Who knows. It's all really weird. In any event, 7 will be used for many years, even if MS kills support for it. Just like XP did.

I can see them actually doing that because they did it with XP. Also it will take a while for software devs like Valve with Steam to drop support for 7 after MS stops supporting it just like XP.

Just noticed yet: the build version of the DLLs is the same as RS5, which is also the last Windows 10 LTSC (supported until 2029)... So the support for Windows 7 could become an extra extension, especially considering how important is Windows 7 in market like PRC and Russia. But that's just an observation and personal opinion.

Fender178:

Not a bad idea by Microsoft since there are some gamers out there who are still using 7. I can see them actually doing that because they did it with XP. Also it will take a while for software devs like Valve with Steam to drop support for 7 after MS stops supporting it just like XP.

Theres no foreseeable reason to drop Windows 7 support any time within the next 5 years, Vista and XP were dropped simply because they lacked the TLS support needed, and didn't receive SHA2 compatibility.