When Microsoft created DirectX, one of its primary goals was to promote games development for the Windows environment. Prior to DirectX, the majority of games developed for the personal computer were MS-DOS-based. Developers of these games had to conform to a number of hardware implementations for a variety of cards. With DirectX, games developers get the benefits of device independence without losing the benefits of direct access to the hardware. The primary goals of DirectX are to provide portable access to the features used with MS-DOS today, to meet or improve on the performance of MS-DOS console-based applications, and to remove the obstacles to hardware innovation on the personal computer.
Additionally, Microsoft developed DirectX to provide Windows-based applications with high-performance, real-time access to available hardware on current and future computer systems. DirectX provides a consistent interface between hardware and applications, reducing the complexity of installation and configuration and using the hardware to its best advantage. By using the interfaces provided by DirectX, software developers can take advantage of hardware features without being concerned about the implementation details of that hardware.
A high-performance Windows-based game will take advantage of the following technologies: