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Deus Ex: Mankind Divided gets a makeover with DirectX 12 preview build

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Image used with permission by copyright holder
The development team behind Deus Ex: Mankind Divided made good on a pre-release promise today, releasing a patch which allows PC players to switch over to DirectX 12.

Today’s patch is ultimately a preview of the DirectX 12 build of Mankind Divided, and doesn’t support multi-GPU setups just yet. Full support is slated to come out later this month, but today’s DirectX 12 build is an important part of that process.

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Eidos Montreal is still putting the finishing touches on the DirectX 12 build, and still needs a little community feedback before releasing the final version, Tom’s Hardware reports.

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The current DirectX 12 build is available via the Betas tab of the game’s properties page in Steam. Just click over to “dx12_preview” in order to download and install the patch.

The technical wizardry behind DirectX 12 is pretty impressive, but what does it really mean for your games?

Well, for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, you’ll probably be able to squeeze more juice out of your GPU – running the game on higher settings without taking as big a hit to your frame rate. You should probably experiment a little to see how much your GPU will get out of the DirectX 12 update. If you step up your quality settings and take a walk around Prague, you might be in for a pleasant surprise.

Or not, depending on your system. In some past instances, DirectX 12 updates haven’t provided a clear benefit across the board. The early DirectX 12 release of Rise of the Tomb Raider, for example, didn’t gain much from it.

In any case, Deus Ex developer Eidos Montreal promised DirectX 12 support earlier this year, prior to the release of the crawling-through-vents simulator, Mankind Divided. Given the technical issues some PC players have had, it’s refreshing to see the development team still hard at work supporting the game and fixing serious issues – while delivering on pre-release promises.

Jayce Wagner
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A staff writer for the Computing section, Jayce covers a little bit of everything -- hardware, gaming, and occasionally VR.
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