that's where you're completely wrong. most of dx12 new stuff is to allow devs to manage low-level calls which is basically what mantle also does, and that's mainly to reduce cpu to gpu bottlenecks so that the game can unleash the real power of the gpu.

one side-effect is when you can apply big optimizations on this part, in addition to being able to feed more data to the gpu, you also free the cpu from some useless tasks, so the cpu can be used for more interesting tasks.

so theorically, it can benefit especially to a game which is more cpu-intensive.

but maybe for an rts, the best enhancement would be to use apis like directcompute which can allow to deport some features normaly reserved to the cpu (like ai or physics) to the gpu which is hundreds of time more efficient than the cpu at this sort of stuff. and that is independant of directx, but the devs has to take an interest in it.

Considering Windows 7 maintains 60% market share compared to ~25% to 8/8.1, as well as being used by businesses almost 100% of the time, it would be shockingly stupid for Microsoft to not support it.

Maybe I was wrong assuming companies had a modicum of commonsense? lol

I'll be honest, having used both OS', I can say that barring a few UI derps, Windows 8.1 is vastly superior to Windows 7 in several ways, not least of which is the ~10% performance boost across most games. It's hard to argue against it, even though the original release ate the balls.

Because that's always gone so well, right?

Look at me with my quaint faith in Humanity and the common good.

Thank you for restoring my precious and irreplaceable cynicism and defeatism! Can't go too long without those