There was an unofficial attempt to create a DirectX 10 distribution that enabled you to get some of the benefits the update brings. So what do you do if you want to use DirectX 10 on XP but it was never officially released by Microsoft? Some games are not made to be backwards compatible with DirectX 9 either these days and you just can’t play the game, whether your graphics card fully supports DirectX 10 and 11 or not.
Although we’re now on DirectX 11 for Windows Vista, 7 and 8, and the next Windows will probably come with DirectX 12, Windows XP is stuck on DirectX 9 which is now over 10 years old. Newer versions of DirectX bring audio and visual enhancements to gaming along with better performance, so if you’re a gamer, you really want the latest DirectX you can get your hands on.ĭirectX is tightly integrated into the operating system when installed so you can’t simply install DirectX 10 or 11 on XP because it won’t work. One of the main selling points of Windows Vista was that gamers simply had to upgrade because of the integration of DirectX 10 into the new operating system.
As far as Windows gaming goes, Windows XP was probably left behind way back in 2007 when Vista was released.
