Supporting Extended Format Awareness
This section applies only to Windows 7 and later operating systems.
Several new formats are defined for the version of Direct3D 10.1 that Windows 7 provides. Also, Windows 7 Direct3D 10.1 provides the DXGI_FORMAT_R8G8B8A8_TYPELESS existing format family with the ability to cast between members. Direct3D 10.1 and later versions expose this extended format support through a new version and hardware capability discovery mechanism. Direct3D 10.0 does not support extended formats even if the graphics hardware has Direct3D 10.1 capabilities.
The following are new Direct3D 10.1 features to support extended format awareness:
New XR formats for high color scan-out
Re-adding BGR formats that are missing from Direct3D version 10
Enabling creation of differently-formatted views of fully-typed members of the DXGI_FORMAT_R8G8B8A8_TYPELESS, DXGI_FORMAT_R10G10B10A2_TYPELESS and DXGI_FORMAT_R16G16B16_A16_TYPELESS families, which contain all the Direct3D version 10 scan-out formats
Scan-out and present support for BGRA and BGRA_SRGB
Windows 7 also provides its version of Direct3D 9 with a new swap-chain flag that permits the XR interpretation of a 10:10:10:2 back buffer to communicate to the DWM.
The following sections describe the new features for Direct3D:
Details of the Extended Format
Fully-Typed Back Buffers Casting