I'm no expert, but the only reason why Windows 7 gamers need to upgrade to Windows 10, is for games built on DX12.
But with game developers adopting Vulkan, more and more, I don't see the need to worry.
Vulkan games will most probably mean the advent of Linux gaming, too.
Disclaimer: I'm on Windows 10, on my gaming PC, don't have any problems at all.
That, and WDDM 2.0.
Under Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) v1.x, the device driver interface (DDI) is built such that graphics processing unit (GPU) engines are expected to reference memory through segment physical addresses. As segments are shared across applications and over committed, resources gets relocated through their lifetime and their assigned physical addresses change. This leads to the need to track memory references inside command buffers through allocation and patch location lists, and to patch those buffers with the correct physical memory reference before submission to a GPU engine. This tracking and patching is expensive and essentially imposes a scheduling model where the video memory manager has to inspect every packet before it can be submitted to an engine.
As more hardware vendors move toward a hardware based scheduling model, where work is submitted to the GPU directly from user mode and where the GPU manages the various queue of work itself, it is necessary to eliminate the need for the video memory manager to inspect and patch every command buffer before submission to a GPU engine.
To achieve this we are introducing support for GPU virtual addressing in WDDM v2. In this model, each process gets assigned a unique GPU virtual address space in which every GPU context to execute in. An allocation, created or opened by a process, gets assigned a unique GPU virtual address within that process GPU virtual address space that remains constant and unique for the lifetime of the allocation. This allows the user mode driver to reference allocations through their GPU virtual address without having to worry about the underlying physical memory changing through its lifetime.
Individual engines of a GPU can operate in either physical or virtual mode. In the physical mode, the scheduling model remains the same as it is with WDDM v1.x. In the physical mode the user mode driver continues to generate the allocation and patch location lists. They are submitted along a command buffer and are used to patch command buffers to actual physical addresses before submission to an engine.
In the virtual mode, an engine references memory through GPU virtual addresses. In this mode the user mode driver generates command buffers directly from user mode and uses new services to submit those commands to the kernel. In this mode the user mode driver doesn't generate allocation or patch location lists, although it is still responsible for managing the residency of allocations.
