Cyberpunk 2077 is DX12 Only for and Only Works on Windows 7 & 10

In all fairness, the news that Cyberpunk 2077 will be DX12 only isn’t that big of a surprise. Nor is it that shocking to reveal that it will only work on Windows 7 and Windows 10. If you’re still kicking around on Windows 8, or even still using a car that only supports DX11, you’re straight out of luck on this one folks, and it’s time to upgrade. Well, if you want to play Cyberpunk 2077 that is.

Cyberpunk 2077 is DX12 Only

“Thanks to the introduction of DX12 support for Windows 7 SP1 that Microsoft introduced last year, the game will run on this system. We do, and will continue to, test Cyberpunk 2077 on Windows 7 in an attempt to iron out any edge-cases that might arise. Unfortunately, Windows 8 didn’t receive its variant of DX12 libraries.” said Marcin Gollent, Lead Graphics Programmer at CD Projekt RED.

Basically, there is no DX11 fallback, as many games have. I honestly expected this much sooner from a lot of games, but DX12 Ultimate does have a lot of additional features, such as the core aspects of Ray Tracing that will also be prevalent on next-gen consoles.

“Regarding DX12 Ultimate, Cyberpunk 2077 will work absolutely fine with all DX12-compatible GPUs. What the “Ultimate” feature set does is it allows us to do more if the hardware allows for it. We opted to go with DX12 for two main reasons. Firstly, it is the standard API for the Xbox platforms. With the game also coming to Xbox One, we naturally wanted to have it implemented as soon as possible. Secondly, it is the birthplace of DXR, and given we had plans to invest in DXR very early on, that made the choice to go with DX12 a pretty straightforward one.“

Cyberpunk 2077 launches on November 19th, so you’ve got time to make sure you’re PC is ready for it!