First released as DirectX 1.0 (4.02.0095) on September 30, 1995, DirectX is a set of APIs developed by Microsoft for allowing instructions to communicate with audio and video hardware. Games that include DirectX have the capability of utilizing multimedia and graphics accelerator features more efficiently and improve the overall multimedia performance.

Latest DirectX versions

Early versions of Microsoft Windows (XP and earlier) had multiple versions of DirectX that had to be installed separately. Later versions of Windows included DirectX with some having the ability to upgrade. Below are the latest versions of DirectX for the different versions of Windows.

Windows 10 = DirectX 12. Windows Vista 7, and 8 = Up to DirectX 11 (Vista released with DirectX 10). Other Windows latest version = Up to DirectX 9.0c depending on Windows version.

The original releases of Windows 95 did not ship with DirectX but was included with Windows 95 OSR2 that had DirectX 2.0. Windows NT shipped with DirectX 2.0. Upgrading to Service Pack 3 or higher installs DirectX 3.0. However, there are no higher versions of DirectX available for Windows NT. However, installing Service Pack 4 or higher will install later versions of DirectPlay.

  • How to determine the version of Windows on a computer.

DirectX versions

DirectX is included with different releases of programs, drivers, and games. Below is a listing of each of the DirectX versions and their associated versions.

CamelCase, Game terms

  • DirectX help and support.