AMD walk back from claims that Windows 7 won’t get DirectX 12

I ‘speculate’ that Huddy is actually right about this.

Towards the end of last week, it emerged that AMD’s Richard Huddy (their “gaming scientist”) had made some statements at an event called PDXLAN regarding DirectX 12. Specifically, he seemed pretty adamant that Microsoft’s latest graphics API would not be coming to Windows 7.

Statements like “One thing that’s not going to happen to it is DX12 … Yup, DX12 is not coming to Windows 7” certainly gave that impression, anyway.

Today, AMD has distanced themselves from Huddy’s comments.

“There have been reports based on a video of Richard Huddy of AMD making speculative comments around DirectX 12 support on versions of Windows,” the company says in a widely circulated statement.

“Richard Huddy does not speak for Microsoft, and he was unfortunately speculating from Microsoft’s publication of key dates and milestones for Windows 7 lifecycle and mainstream support policy. Richard has no special insight into Microsoft’s Windows or DirectX roadmaps.”

“Microsoft is a key, strategic partner for AMD and we’re continuously collaborating with them on DirectX 12,” it rather tellingly concludes.

DirectX 12 has already been confirmed as compatible with Windows 8, and (obviously) the upcoming Windows 10. It wouldn’t exactly be a huge surprise to learn that Windows 7 won’t be supported, but Microsoft apparently aren’t ready to make that official.