Windows 8.1 DX12 is coming.....

[kemical]

It won't be with us just yet but an MSDN blog explains what the new API will mean for the future of gaming:

What makes Direct3D 12 better? First and foremost, it provides a lower level of hardware abstraction than ever before, allowing games to significantly improve multithread scaling and CPU utilization. In addition, games will benefit from reduced GPU overhead via features such as descriptor tables and concise pipeline state objects. And that’s not all – Direct3D 12 also introduces a set of new rendering pipeline features that will dramatically improve the efficiency of algorithms such as order-independent transparency, collision detection, and geometry culling.

Read the full blog here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/directx/archive/2014/03/20/directx-12.aspx