[vbezhenar]

> Also, given that Windows versions other than ten still make up more than half of the PC market, Direct3D 12 is not even an option for most PCs, but Vulkan is.

What hardware Nvidia and AMD will support with Vulkan? It might turn out, that they will support relatively new hardware and Windows 7 usually used with older hardware, so it might be unavailable even for Windows 7. And if those users will upgrade to Windows 10, they'll have working DirectX 12.

[microcolonel]

They support mostly the same hardware with Vulkan, and they already ship Vulkan drivers by default through Windows Update. If they're on Windows 7, they'll have working Vulkan. If they move to Windows 10, they'll still have it.

NVIDIA provides Vulkan back to Fermi (April 2010). AMD provides Vulkan on all GCN models (January 2012). They provide this support on all supported versions of Windows. For Fermi cards, I believe NVIDIA may have shipped Vulkan drivers all the way back to Windows XP (though I think they stopped doing XP releases in June last year).