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DXUP 1.0

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@Oblivionevil Oblivionevil released this 17 Oct 11:11
v1.0.0
d4b4756

DXUP runs Direct3D 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 games on Direct3D 12. This is version 1.0.

Note: this project was written by an AI. The code, the tests and the documentation were written by Anthropic's Claude (Claude Code). The maintainer directs the work and tests it in games.

Installation

Run DXUP-Setup-1.0.0.exe (7 MB). It installs to C:\Program Files\DXUP and adds DXUP Manager to the Start menu. The manager finds Steam and Battle.net games (or any .exe you pick), copies the right DLLs into each game folder (32- or 64-bit, by the game's executable) and keeps each game's settings.

  • Updating: the setup keeps your games and settings and brings every game's DXUP copy up to date. Close DXUP Manager first.
  • Requirements: 64-bit Windows 10/11 and .NET Framework 4.8.1. DXUP needs a GPU with a Direct3D 12 driver; without one, games run on Windows' own Direct3D 11.

The setup is unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen may ask for confirmation.

What DXUP does

  • Translates DirectDraw 7 / Direct3D 7 (ddraw.dll), Direct3D 8 (d3d8.dll), Direct3D 9 (d3d9.dll) and Direct3D 10 / 11 (d3d11.dll, dxgi.dll) to Direct3D 12, for 32- and 64-bit games.
  • Per-game settings, like a driver control panel: anisotropic filtering, mipmap LOD bias, MSAA and forced MSAA, supersampling (SGSSAA), VSync, pre-rendered frames, rendering at a lower resolution with DXUP's own upscaling, shader compilation in the background and precompiling the shaders of earlier runs.

Changes since 0.10.6

  • License: DXUP is released under the MIT License (LICENSE.txt in the installation and in the portable zip).
  • Build paths: the DLLs no longer contain the folder they were built in (their PDB is named by file name only).
  • Exception handler: with the diagnostic dxup_exception_trace.txt, DXUP's exception handler could end games that raise exceptions on threads nearly out of stack (Just Cause 2 crashed 5 s after start). It now leaves such threads alone.
  • Upscalers: this release comes without the DLSS, FSR and XeSS runtimes. DXUP Manager shows the upscaler settings only when they are installed.

Known issues

  • DXUP is tested on one PC with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090. Other NVIDIA, AMD and Intel GPUs are hardly tested yet; bug reports are welcome.
  • Unreal Engine 4 games (Kena, Orcs Must Die! 3) and The Witcher 3 take 3-10% more GPU time than native Direct3D 11. Unreal's own Direct3D 12 renderer is about as slow in the same scenes.
  • dxgi.renderScale speeds up only games that size their rendering by the swap chain.
  • With forced MSAA, Far Cry New Dawn runs slower than with 0.8.0. Its stencil-tested decals are now drawn, while 0.8.0 dropped them.

Portable

DXUP-1.0.0-portable.zip contains the DLLs in x64 and x86, dxup.conf.example and LICENSE.txt. Copy the DLLs of the API the game uses (and the game's bitness) next to its executable. d3d8.dll, d3d9.dll and ddraw.dll run on Direct3D 12 only with DXUP's d3d11.dll and dxgi.dll beside them.

Notes

Using DXUP with online games that run anti-cheat software is at your own risk.

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