Windows 8.1 will bring DirectX 11.2 support, which includes plenty of performance tweaks, new Direct3D features such as Tiled Resources and other goodies. However, there’s still no DirectX 11.2 hardware out there, sort of.

AMD’s GCN-based GPUs are fully compatible with DirectX 11.2 at least in theory. All it takes to make them DX 11.2 enabled is a driver tweak. We suspected HD 7000 series GCN parts were DirectX 11.2 compatible for quite some time and now it’s official.

AMD says the HD 7000 series is fully compatible with DX 11.2 with a new driver, which should appear in the Windows 8.1 launch timeframe, in October.

“Today, AMD is the only GPU manufacturer to offer fully-compatible DirectX 11.1 support, and the only manufacturer to support Tiled Resources Tier-2 within a shipping product stack,” AMD said in a statement.

This means that by the end of the year AMD will have two generations of DirectX 11.2 compatible products, while Nvidia might end up with none. We’ll try to find out more on Nvidia’s DirectX 11.x plans as the Windows 8.1 rollout draws near.