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DirectX

Helps Windows computers display multimedia content, especially games and videos

6.5

4712 Votes

  • Category Necessary Components
  • Program license Free
  • Version 9.29.1974.20210222
  • Size 299.86 kB
  • Works under: Windows 10
  • Program available in English
  • Program by Microsoft

With Microsoft DirectX, you can fully optimize the use of your PC's hardware, and you will have better capabilities than ever before for both videos and gaming. In fact, you have a collection of libraries that have been dedicated to the video and audio processing of the sound card. There is also a peripheral input and output jack. After you have installed DirectX, you should notice a significant improvement with your graphics and sound card's performance. In general, it should improve all the multimedia tasks.

DirectX: Powering Many of the Biggest Gaming Titles

An exciting emergence is how Windows 10 recently arrived, and along with integrated Cortana and the new web browsers, one of the key features is the arrival of a new DirectX. That software will power the majority of your Windows games. The other major gaming API that you find in this field is OpenGL. As the name suggests, it is an open source API. Both OpenGL and DirectX have similar functions, but the difference is how DirectX tends to be more at the heart of some of the world's biggest titles. Microsoft has really hyped this product, but some of the newest features have truly added new effects and functions to the games, which make them look better than ever before.

How DirectX Has Gotten Better

One of the key features in this software is how the 3D graphics portion has greatly improved the way that software developers can optimize their games, using specific hardware. For example, you have Direct3D, which offers you a lower level of hardware abstraction, and you can reconfigure the graphics and manage them. Hardware abstraction is at the heart of what makes the API useful, and instead of having to make the developers write code for the different drivers and hardware, the API deals with a more simplified set of instructions.

Is DirectX Better Than OpenGL?

The answer rests on whether you prefer the specifications of DirectX over those of OpenGL. In fact, both of these APIs are doing largely the same thing, but where the difference comes in at is that DirectX is built-in as the default for Windows, XBLA and Xbox only. Meanwhile, OpenGL, as the name might suggest, has become more of an open standard in terms of functionality for a lot of other platforms. DirectX has more built-in effects for the visual end. That means that games that have more sophisticated visuals tend to look better with DirectX. You should choose whichever API will be best for your platform. Ultimately, good graphics will depend more on the technical director and the artists. Whether you should choose DirectX or OpenGL will depend more on preferences. For example, OpenGL does tend to run faster because there are no strict specifications, but that also means that the experience is less consistent than what you get with DirectX.

Pros

  • Has better visuals than OpenGL
  • Has become the standard for a lot of the larger titles
  • The graphical experience is more Consistent because of strict specifications

Cons

  • Tends to be slower than OpenGL
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