Patch 8.1.5 - Jaina Encounter Hotfixes
It appears that the Jaina encounter has had health reduced by 5% and Mythic Chilling Touch damage reduced by 10%.



New Graphics APIs in 8.1.5
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
In 8.1.5, we are making some improvements to how World of Warcraft uses DirectX. In essence, our old DirectX 11 is now called DirectX 11 Legacy, and our new DirectX 11 is multi-threaded. More details on each DirectX version is below:

DirectX 11 Legacy
A single-threaded rendering backend. This is provided to be the most compatible with older hardware, operating systems, and drivers. This is also the least performant. This is very similar to the functionality of DirectX 11 in 8.0.1.

DirectX 11
A new multi-threaded rendering backend using DirectX 11. This should improve performance for older GPUs or operating systems that don’t support DirectX 12. This is new for 8.1.5.

DirectX 12
A multi-threaded rendering backend using DirectX 12 for hardware, drivers, and operating systems that support it. There are some performance improvements in 8.1.5, but it is mainly the same as the 8.1.0 release.1 Reply1

World of Warcraft Supports DirectX 12 on Windows 7
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
After we saw the performance gains of using multi-threaded rendering in DirectX 12 for the initial Tides of Vengeance update, we worked together with Microsoft and our hardware vendors to bring similar performance gains to our Windows 7 users. We are pleased to announce that with today’s content update, World of Warcraft will now support DirectX 12 on Windows 7. This allows our Windows 7 users to take advantage of the performance benefit of using DirectX 12, which was previously only available to our Windows 10 users.

Windows 7 users will need to make sure they have the latest graphics drivers to use DirectX 12. If your GPU supports DirectX 12 on Windows 7, you may enable it by selecting it in the Advanced System settings, under "Graphics API".

DirectX Developer Blog
This article was originally published in forum thread: Patch 8.1.5 - Jaina Hotfixes, New Graphics APIs in 8.1.5, DirectX 12 on Windows 7 started by chaud View original post
Comments 16 Comments
  1. Kobor's Avatar
    How is this DX12 support on Windows7???
    It is not only available on Win10?

    On the other hand with the new multi-thread support for DX11, it could be the same performance on Win 8.1 as Win10 with DX12 on the same hardware?
    I was planning to Update from Win 8.1 into Win 10, just for having benefit from new multi-thread, but will not do it then.

    GPU is GTX 970 and CPU is i7-4790K (4 GHz)
  1. Qnubi's Avatar
    It's the first DX12 game on Win7. Weird move (from Microsoft) considering support ends in less than a year. Maybe they have plans to prolong Win7 even for private users? I would be willing to pay a lot of money if I can keep Win7 for longer. I might check out the patch just because of that lol.
  1. caervek's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kobor View Post
    How is this DX12 support on Windows7???
    If Blizzard worked with Microsoft on it, then it's entirely possible but phrased badly.

    What I mean is, WoW doe not fully utilise the "new" features of DX12, it's not even close, when it runs in DX12 mode it's basically a DX11 game using legacy DX11 assets still present in DX12 but also some of the new codepath to utilise some DX12 improvements.

    So on that basis as the game only uses a tiny amount of DX12 it's entirely possible that Microsoft have helped Blizzard bring those features to Windows 7, as kind of a DirectX 12 "lite"/"express".

    *EDIT*

    Yeah MS pretty much confirm it won't run as well on 7 as on 10:

    https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dir...-on-windows-7/
  1. excalibrax's Avatar
    Could be about money, as long as its only wow, Blizzard paying Microsoft to continue to support it for just wows part.
  1. mujin73's Avatar
    Yes! Finally SLI IS ALIVE AGAIN
  1. vashe9's Avatar
    People should move on an use Windows10 already ffs... There is absolutely no reason to say in W7 anymore unless your pc is REALLY outdated. And even so, W10 is more efficient that Windows 7 even on potatoes

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Kobor View Post
    How is this DX12 support on Windows7???
    It is not only available on Win10?

    On the other hand with the new multi-thread support for DX11, it could be the same performance on Win 8.1 as Win10 with DX12 on the same hardware?
    I was planning to Update from Win 8.1 into Win 10, just for having benefit from new multi-thread, but will not do it then.

    GPU is GTX 970 and CPU is i7-4790K (4 GHz)
    A Windows 10 licence (official!) costs 10€ on Amazon (maybe less for US) and there are a lot more benefits than just this improvement in wow...
  1. Aretak's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by vashe9 View Post
    A Windows 10 licence (official!) costs 10€ on Amazon (maybe less for US) and there are a lot more benefits than just this improvement in wow...
    It isn't about money. Whilst there are improvements in Windows 10, there's also a whole bunch of undesirable crap that people don't want, such as the forced updates and telemetry out the ass. Personally, I use LTSC as it's the closest thing there is to Windows 7 and allows you to have control back over things like updating, but it's hardly a ringing endorsement of Windows 10 to say that the best version is the one that's as close as possible to a decade-old OS.
  1. vashe9's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Aretak View Post
    It isn't about money. Whilst there are improvements in Windows 10, there's also a whole bunch of undesirable crap that people don't want, such as the forced updates and telemetry out the ass. Personally, I use LTSC as it's the closest thing there is to Windows 7 and allows you to have control back over things like updating, but it's hardly a ringing endorsement of Windows 10 to say that the best version is the one that's as close as possible to a decade-old OS.
    You can disable all of this and in case you didnt know, there is already some telemetry in Windows 7 too... Auto updates ARE A GOOD THING (!!), because people having vulnerable outdated OS are the cause of most of "virus/trojan" problems. If you are up to date, you're a lot less likely to be vulnerable... but well, a lot of people are clueless anyway...

    Stop using smartphones, google, amazon,... if you don't want to be tracked... not updating to windows 10 (but using win7 instead of unix) is totally useless. If you don't want to give informations to microsoft, don't use Win7, use linux/unix...

    A lot of things, and I mean A LOT of things are not compatible/updated for Win 7 anymore and support will end next year anyway.
  1. Kobor's Avatar
    Its not about money to update to Win10, its different sort of UI and network share parts that is not my taste.
    Tried it back in time, reverted to 8.1.
  1. Psygon's Avatar
    Microsoft has more than enough devs to keep up security updates for XP, 7, 8 and 10. They don't because of one reason: licensing agreements. Everything they include requires a license, so things like the DIVX video codec for XP Media Center are no longer valid. Microsoft doesn't want to touch old software licensing.

    Instead they just throw up their arms and say, that's it! Windows 10 or nothing. Although you lose Aeroglass, the Win10 experience isn't bad, so it's usable.
  1. Qnubi's Avatar
    Tested all 3 Graphics API on my Win7 machine in a neutral (no NPCs) environment:

    DX11 Legacy: 170 FPS
    DX11: 200 FPS
    DX12: 195 FPS

    Changed a couple of times between DX11/12 to make sure, and DX11 is slightly ahead in every situation. A good update for Win7 users, especially if you have a 144hz screen.
  1. coprax's Avatar
    This must be the best wow patch ever, that multicore dx change boosted my fps in boralus by 50% or so.
  1. Flaim's Avatar
    Why did they have to f*ck around with dx12 in the first place, if their goal was to provide the benefits to as many people as possible? Why not going straight for vulkan? Now it's too late anyways...
  1. MarkTheMadMad's Avatar
    Just an interesting fact...Direct X 12 programming is soooo hard and complex. My university purposely teaches us Direct X 11 because of this reason.
  1. huth's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by vashe9 View Post
    You can disable all of this and in case you didnt know, there is already some telemetry in Windows 7 too... Auto updates ARE A GOOD THING (!!), because people having vulnerable outdated OS are the cause of most of "virus/trojan" problems. If you are up to date, you're a lot less likely to be vulnerable... but well, a lot of people are clueless anyway...
    No, you can't disable all of it. Even national governments cannot.

    And their updates have repeatedly broken stuff to the point of making PCs unusable. That's not exactly a speaking in their favour.

    Yes, auto-updates are good for simple users that don't really know what they're doing. For more advanced users, it's a different matter, and they might very well be more trouble than it is worth.
  1. Elrandir's Avatar
    omg finally able to get 60 fps without drops in boralus and on world bosses, feels soooooo good.

    I7 8700 1070 ti and I got everything on highest except view distance and env detail on 9, shadows on 2nd highest and AA on 2xMSAA

    Not perfect but I'll freaking take smooth frames in boralus and raids without having to use raid settings with a big smile!

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