Intel reveals that the ARC GPUs do not have native DirectX 9 support, but use DX9 to DX12 emulation

A recent article published on the official Intel site discloses that the new ARC Alchemist GPUs do not feature native DirectX 9 support. However, Intel still offers DX9 compatibility through the D3D9on12 emulator that acts as a conversion layer and device driver interface. While this can significantly simplify the graphics pipeline and accelerate the development process, driver issues causing instability may still arise.

Since most of the popular titles nowadays do not rely on DX9 anymore, the performance impact of Intel’s emulating technique should be minimal. Still, twitter user Bionic_squash points out that pure DX9 games like CS:GO run very poorly on the ARC GPUs, and there is a chance that Intel is emulating DX11 through DX12 as well. According to Steam, most of the top 10 games use a combination of DX11 and DX9, so these titles could show stability issues on the ARC GPUs, unless Microsoft steps in and corrects the issues with future Windows updates.

The ARC GPUs were initially planned to launch in Q1 this year, but Intel invoked some driver issues which needed to be addressed, thus postponing the launch to Q2 initially. To this date, it is still unclear when the more powerful ARC GPUs will see availability. Even though Microsoft claims that the emulation process is offering performance close to native DX9 implementations, the driver issues still plaguing the ARC GPUs could be related to this approach. Intel might have fixed the DX9 stability, but the delay may now be caused by the issues resulting from the DX11 emulation through DX12.

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