DirectX 12, also known as DX12, provides better gaming performance as compared to DX11. If you have upgraded your operating system to Windows 11, you may wonder how to download DX12.

When installing Windows 11, a graphics card compatible with DirectX 12 or later with WDDM 2.0 driver will be required since DX12 is included in Windows 11. Moreover, the newest DirectX version, DirectX 12 Ultimate, which features sampler feedback, DX raytracing, mesh shade, and VRS, is also compatible with Windows 11 and has higher hardware requirements, such as the GeForce RTX graphics card and the AMD Radeon™ RX 6000 series graphics cards. Simply put, you don’t need to manually upgrade your DirectX version to DX12(Ultimate), as Windows 11 will automatically install it if supported.

In some cases, you may see that your computer doesn’t support DirectX 12 (Ultimate) after upgrading to Windows 11. One possible reason is that your graphics driver isn’t compatible with DX12, and Windows 11 doesn’t block your computer from installing and running. You can check your graphics card model and see if it supports DX12.

Here’s what you can do:

  1. On your keyboard, press the Windows logo key and R together to invoke the Run prompt, then type DxDiag and hit Enter.
  2. Once the DirectX Diagnostic Tool pops up, check if you’ve installed DX12 as in the screenshot below.
  3. Now, switch to the Display tab from the top menu, and check the Drivers part on the right. If you see “Direct3D DDI: 12“, “Feature Levels: 12_1,12_0,…“, and “Driver Model: 2.0” (or later), then your graphics card is definitely compatible with DirectX 12 (Ultimate). Otherwise, you will only have to downgrade your system to Windows 10 and install either DirectX 11 or DirectX 10 according to what your display card supports.

If your computer supports DX12, we recommend always keeping up with the newly released DirectX 12 (Ultimate) version. To do so, you can either use the Windows Update tool or Driver Techie as follows:

  1. On your keyboard, press the Windows logo key and I together to open Windows Settings.
  2. Click Windows Update from the left sidebar, and then click the Check for updates button.