Intel has moved to DirectX 9 emulation for new Arc and Xe graphics cards

Intel has stopped offering native support for DirectX 9 on its most recent Arc and integrated Xe graphics cards. Instead, those GPUs use a DirectX emulation layer from Microsoft, which according to the maker performs relatively well.

Intel confirms on his website that the Arc video cards and the integrated Xe GPUs from twelfth generation processors no longer offer native support for DirectX 9, Tom’s Hardware was the first to notice. Applications using that api will still work on those video cards via D3D9On12. This is a kind of emulation layer from Microsoft, which forwards DirectX 9 instructions to D3D9On12 and then translates them so that they can be used on a video card’s DirectX 12 driver. The integrated GPUs in Intel’s 11th generation processors and older keep native DirectX 9 support.

D3D9On12 has been a part of Windows 10 and the source code of the translation layer for years has been open source since last year. Microsoft says that in recent years this emulation approach has evolved into “a complete and relatively high-performing implementation of a D3D9 driver.” With that, the performance shouldn’t be much lower than with native DirectX 9.

Intel makes integrated GPUs for its processors and is currently working on its separate Arc Alchemist video cards for laptops and desktops. The first reviews showed that those Arc GPUs suffer from driver problems and disappointing performance. The company previously confirmed that games that use older graphics APIs, such as DX11 and older, are not yet properly optimized on Arc. That’s because those older APIs have extra ‘driver baggage’ between the game and the GPU hardware, whereas more modern APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan are more low-level and can therefore communicate more directly with the hardware. The company says it is working on optimizing Arc for older APIs.

It’s not clear what the performance impact of DirectX 9 emulation will be on Arc and Xe, but given Intel’s driver issues with older APIs and Microsoft’s claims that D3D9On12 performs relatively well, it seems like a good move. The Arc video cards will be widely available later this year after a delay.