The launch for Intel’s first foray into the dedicated GPU market has gone far from smoothly. Intel Arc GPUs were expected to be released earlier in 2022, but so far it has only made its way into the Chinese market.

That said, this hasn’t stopped reviewers from getting their hands on the new hardware for testing purposes. Major channels such as Linus Tech Tips and Gamers Nexus have reviewed some of the hardware with less than stellar reviews, due to issues with drivers.

However, driver support isn’t the only problem for the released/upcoming GPUs. According to Intel’s own support page on the matter, Intel Arc does not natively support DirectX9. Instead, DirectX9 based titles will run through Microsoft’s D3D9On12 interface, which essentially emulates it.

Fortunately, this doesn’t mean that games based on the older API won’t run thanks to D3D9on12. However, this continues on the line of issues that reviewers have had with the Arc GPUs losing out on performance on games that don’t use DirectX12, the latest graphics API from Microsoft.

The fact that the GPUs don’t support DirectX9 also means that users will need to turn their attention to Microsoft instead of Intel, should they run into issues with the hardware on those older games.

Intel Arc GPUs should be releasing to global markets outside of China throughout the coming months.

This is Niche Gamer Tech. In this column, we regularly cover tech and things related to the tech industry. Please leave feedback and let us know if there’s tech or a story you want us to cover!