FFXIV Guide:DX11 for beginners

Hey everyone, there seems to be a lot of confusion about how the DX11 client works and what you need to make it work! Here are a few things to know to help you understand:

Direct X is Microsoft's API, or Application Program Interface. It is how the GPU and CPU talk via your motherboard to draw the images on the screen that we all know as FFXIV. Originally, the game called upon the dated DX9 API, released in 2004.

Recently, we all have seen with the benchmark that FFXIV has incorporated DX11, a much newer, efficient, and better looking API to run the game.

Square Enix stated we would be able to download a separate 'client' for DX11, but I think people are misunderstanding what client means.

The game is a 14.5gb compilation of files before heavensward
DX11 does not mean we will need a mirrored 14.5gb file + HW file size for DX9, and the same for DX11.
If you notice in the HW benchmark, the size is 1.83gb. There isnt a bunch of

DX11 FFXIV FILES
AND
DX9 FFXIV FILES
in fact, if you go into-
-ffxiv HW benchmark folder
-'Game' folder within the main folder
-What do we have here? 1 16.8mb file called [ffxiv] and a 23.8mb file called [ffxiv_dx11]

This is how games call multiple APIs. 'ffxiv' is DX9, 'ffxiv_dx11' is DX11. This is all you will download for heavensward, a simple patch only 24mb or slightly more in size asking for dx11 to run the game instead of dx9, not an entire game

If you are still confused, just remember DX11 is ALREADY INSTALLED on your computer if you have a card that can run it, and a version of windows that supports it (vista+).

If you ran the DX11 benchmark, you have DX11. It's ready to go. The end. You will get your DX11 file from the website or via the HW patch on early access June 19th, sit back and relax, there's nothing to worry about!

as a side note, if you go into the HW benchmark, and click the text document 'ffxivbenchmarklauncher' and look at what opens in notepad, you see things like WaterTess_DX9 = 0 and WaterWetness_DX11=1, the =0 means off, the =1 means on. It's calling DX11 and DX9 at the same time. NBD.

EDIT DX11 is Microsoft, meaning no MAC, PS4 or PS3 users will see these changes.