Windows Direct X 11 Update
The great X of the computer world, less famous than Xerox or the Xeon processor perhaps, but ubiquitous and indispensible nonetheless. Since 1995, it’s been a part of every copy of Windows ever sold and, seven years after its birth, it became the X in Xbox.
Direct X is mentioned frequently in relation to Windows and especially gaming, but what is it? The name Direct X is used as a general title to refer to several application programming interfaces (APIs) that were invented to allow programmers opportunities to successfully develop games for the Windows platform. The Microsoft DOS platform had been well-received by programmers and it allowed direct access to crucial components of game design like video cards and sound devices.
Windows, however, took a different tact and restricted access to these features which caused worry at Microsoft that developers would not make games for the system and thus sales would be damaged. Because of this, they invented a suite of interfaces like DirectDraw, DirectSound, DirectPlay etcetera. These all allowed programmers that crucial access to the tools they would need for program development, and eventually the names of all the “Direct” interfaces were lumped together as “Direct X” where “X” replaces the name of an individual API.
Now Direct X 12 is on its way as the new default API system for Windows, but Direct X 11 is still the standard widely-used API of choice. Within the last few months many Windows 7 users have encountered an issue with Direct X 11’s diagnostic tool cannot report the correct amount of approximate total memory for the system.
This has almost exclusively been reported by users who have equipped their systems with large amounts of RAM and video memory. The blame has been pointed at the fact that one of the individual APIs that falls under the “Direct X” umbrella was not designed for systems with large amounts of memory, causing incorrect totals to display.
For the most part, the problem is insignificant. Some systems with large amounts of memory that have a Direct X diagnostic run on it may report that much less total memory is available, though this is not actually the case.
There have been a few instances in which some applications haven’t been able to correctly function because of the incorrect reporting of lower memory, but this has been scattered and Microsoft is developing an update to fix the issue. For the most part, customers will still be able to use their applications as normal, though their diagnostic may report incorrect amounts of memory.
Users have been told to look forward to a solution within the next month and, until then, not to panic if Direct X tells them all their memory has disappeared.
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