Compare DirectX 9 and Direct 11

Even computers bought “for study” are now and then used for games. And the developers of the Windows operating system understand this very well, integrating libraries and mechanisms for interacting with a video card directly into the kernel code. And DirectX is just such a tool.

In general, DirectX is a set of application programming interfaces that are designed for applications to interact with hardware. For example, the Graphics algorithm package included in it is needed to work with a video card, and DirectMusic is needed with a sound card. In general, it includes nine interface packages aimed at playing and outputting various multimedia content.

DirectX is evolving at the same time as the Windows operating system. Every 1-3 years, new versions of it are released, aimed at improving the performance of peripheral equipment. And therefore, for many novice gamers, it may not be clear how one iteration differs from another.

Let’s figure out how Direct 9 differs from DirectX 11 and other versions.

DirectX 9

The DirectX 9 interface was introduced simultaneously with the Windows Server 2003 operating system and is included in it as the main API for interacting with graphics and sound hardware.

The main advantage of the interface was the support for shaders. Shaders are special subroutines that are needed to determine the geometric properties of an object. So, thanks to them, objects in games can cast realistic shadows, other things can be reflected in them, and so on. Shaders make games more beautiful and cinematic, virtual worlds feel more natural.

It is not yet clear why Microsoft decided to implement DX9.0 into the server operating system. However, in 2004, she also released Windows XP SP2, and this API was part of it. This is how the distribution of DX9.0 to home users began.

In fact, all games released between 2004 and 2009 are designed to use DirectX 9. The same is true for video cards. Both desktop and mobile (designed for laptops), they are designed to work with this interface.

By the way! It would seem, where did DirectX 10 go? And he didn’t go anywhere, he is. The tenth version of the interface was released in 2006 along with the Windows Vista operating system. But this environment itself was so «braked» and «buggy» that both the creators and game developers preferred to quickly forget about it.

DirectX 11

The DirectX 11 interface was introduced in 2009 along with the Windows 7 operating system and was immediately «adopted» by both video card manufacturers and computer game developers. The reason for this popularity is very simple — multithreading.

The eleventh generation brought enhanced support for multi-threaded computing. Now the video data was divided into several separate streams, each of which was processed on a separate core. Thanks to this, interaction with multi-core video cards has become much better.

After the implementation of this interface, multi-core video cards began to be produced more often and more actively. For example, in NVIDIA’s latest models of graphics accelerators, the computing unit can consist of 3-40$ CUDA cores! Due to this, the speed of processing visual information increases many times.

In general, the main advantages of the eleventh version of the interface are:

1. Support for multi-threading on multi-core graphics accelerators;

2. Increasing the efficiency of single-core and old video cards;

3. Reducing the intensity of heating of graphics accelerators.

In addition, this API brought native support for stretched 16:9 monitors. Thanks to this, the appearance of the operating system in general and the desktop in particular has become much more attractive. Icons no longer run into each other!

However, DX11 requires more resources to run. Therefore, in some cases, on older games, performance with DX11 will be lower than with DX9 — unless, of course, the game allows you to choose the interface through which it will interact.

DirectX 12 was the successor to DX11. This interface was introduced with the Windows 10 operating system in 2005 and brought support for shader model 5.1, which provided even more realistic rendering of textures, shadows and glows.

Differences between DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 — and what to choose

So, the main difference between DX9 and DX11 was the support for multi-threaded calculations. However, the difference is not limited to this.

Thus, DX11 shows better visual results and improved performance on modern graphics cards.

What to choose?

If the installed computer game allows you to select an API for interacting with the hardware (this is allowed in WoT launchers and some other projects), then a decision should be made based on several parameters:

1. Installed operating system. On Windows 7 DX11 is native, DX9 is supported but needs to be installed separately. On Windows XP SP2, native is DX9, but DX11 is not supported at all;

2. Installed video card. If the graphics accelerator is oriented to work with DX11, it is worth choosing DX11;

3. Desire to get impressive visual effects. If it is, it is better to choose DX11.

In general, as of April 2019 — which is when this material was written — even DX11 is an outdated interface. Better go for DX12 as it supports the latest shader model and is even capable of ray tracing, a technology introduced in hardware in 2018 that has made games incredibly realistic with reflections, glare and long shadows.