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We thought this might be interesting for the internet. We have started the process of getting together a list of features that we would like to implement in PerformanceTest V10.
As part of this process we are considering if it would make sense to drop the DirectX9 3D Benchmark from the suite of tests. DirectX was after all introduced in 2002. So it is getting really long in the tooth now. One of our goals with our benchmark software is to provide a reasonable reflection of what is in use in the real world.
So we analysed the Top 50 games on Steam (sorted by number of active players, 2/July/2018 ) and had a look at what version of DirectX they targeted.
This was the result.
So DirectX 11 is now the most popular version to target, but the old version 9 is still very widely used.
This is not so surprising.
There is a large existing code base for V9, and later releases aren't dramatically better in functionality from an end users point of view to really force a change.
V10 was associated with Vista, and we all know what happened to Vista.
V11 works everywhere and on most video cards. It is the sensible target for new development work.
V12 only works on new video cards and only in Windows 10. So developers have been reluctant to target it as they loose half their market. Despite a lot of claims about how good (and simple) DirectX 12 would be, it wasn't much of an improvement over DirectX11 in the end. And it was certainly not simple to use.
So it looks like we'll be keeping the V9 benchmark in the suite for now.
As part of this process we are considering if it would make sense to drop the DirectX9 3D Benchmark from the suite of tests. DirectX was after all introduced in 2002. So it is getting really long in the tooth now. One of our goals with our benchmark software is to provide a reasonable reflection of what is in use in the real world.
So we analysed the Top 50 games on Steam (sorted by number of active players, 2/July/2018 ) and had a look at what version of DirectX they targeted.
This was the result.
So DirectX 11 is now the most popular version to target, but the old version 9 is still very widely used.
This is not so surprising.
There is a large existing code base for V9, and later releases aren't dramatically better in functionality from an end users point of view to really force a change.
V10 was associated with Vista, and we all know what happened to Vista.
V11 works everywhere and on most video cards. It is the sensible target for new development work.
V12 only works on new video cards and only in Windows 10. So developers have been reluctant to target it as they loose half their market. Despite a lot of claims about how good (and simple) DirectX 12 would be, it wasn't much of an improvement over DirectX11 in the end. And it was certainly not simple to use.
So it looks like we'll be keeping the V9 benchmark in the suite for now.