Windows 11 PCs are getting an upgrade to compete with MacBook Pros

(Image credit: ADeltaX/Microsoft)

Windows 11 has been out for a few months at present, and while it'southward a decent operating system it hasn't offered many of u.s.a. a compelling reason to upgrade from Windows 10. In fact, if anything we've spent the final few months monitoring the listing of Windows 11 bug and wondering when Microsoft will cease rolling out the Windows eleven features promised at launch — nigh notably, native Android app back up.

However, this week Microsoft unveiled a new characteristic coming to Windows eleven that may please video professionals who utilise Windows machines for piece of work. In a DirectX Developer Blog post Microsoft's Sil Vilerino announced the release of a new DirectX 12 Video Encode feature that helps apps tap the ability of GPU-accelerated graphics engines to perform more efficient video encoding.

MacBook Pro 16-inch 2022 sitting on a patio table — Windows 11 PCs need all the help they tin go to compete with the video rendering muscles of Apple'southward 2022 MacBook Pro (Image credit: Future)

That's significant considering Windows PCs have oft been snubbed by video professionals in favor of Apple tree hardware. That's only become more mutual in the last few months now that Apple'southward 2022 MacBook Pros take arrived; they're some of the all-time laptops for video editing y'all can buy because they offer incredible performance and features aimed at video pros, including dedicated video encode/decode engines and ProRes (Apple tree'south video codec) accelerators.

The new DirectX 12 Video Encode characteristic in Windows eleven, by comparison, supports the pop H264 and HEVC codecs, with open extensibility for new codecs. Information technology should make Windows eleven a bit more useful equally a platform for pro video work, though the characteristic is nonetheless in preview and currently simply supported on select Nvidia and Intel graphics hardware — Microsoft is working on support for select AMD graphics cards, and expects to have information technology live midway through 2022. Here's the current list of supported chipsets:

Windows 11 Video Encode API supported platforms
Vendor	Supported platforms	Minimum video driver version
AMD	Radeon RX 5000 series or greater \| Ryzen 2xxxx series or greater	In development - ETA Q2 2022
Intel	Tiger Lake \| Ice Lake \| Alder Lake (from early 2022)	v30.0.100.9955
Nvidia	GeForce GTX 10-series and up \| GeForce RTX xx-series and up \| Quadro RTX \| Nvidia RTX	v471.41

In addition to its efficiency, Microsoft claims this new DirectX12 Video Encode API offers a lot of freedom in terms of exposing parameters of the encoding process that developers tin configure as they wish. Curious devs can read more than well-nigh how information technology works over on Microsoft'due south Github, or check out a preview version past downloading the latest DirectX12 Agility SDK.

Alex Wawro is a lifelong tech and games enthusiast with more than a decade of experience roofing both for outlets like Game Developer, Black Hat, and PC World magazine. He currently serves as a senior editor at Tom'due south Guide roofing all things computing, from laptops and desktops to keyboards and mice.