The first version of DirectX was released in September 1995 shortly after the release of Windows 95 under the name Windows Game SDK.

Prior to DirectX 8.0, the graphics programmer was restricted to a fixed-function rendering pipeline. This meant that the implementation of the rendering algorithms was fixed in the graphics hardware. DirectX 8 introduced the first versions of a programmable shading language with Shader Model 1. Shader Model 1 featured a single shader profile for creating a very simple vertex shader and did not provide a shader profile for pixel shading.

DirectX 9.0 was released in December 2002 and introduced Shader Model 2.0. Shader Model 2.0 introduced a new vertex shader profile as well as a pixel shader profile. Pixel shaders provided the ability to create per-pixel lighting.

DirectX 9.0c was released in August 2004 together with the introduction of Shader Model 3.0. Shader Model 3.0 extended the existing vertex shader and pixel shader profiles increasing the number of instructions and allowing for more complex shaders.

In November 2006, DirectX 10 was released which introduced Shader Model 4.0. Shader Model 4.0 extended the functionality of the vertex shader and the pixel shader as well as introduced a new shader profile called the geometry shader. Shader Model 4.0 also introduced the Effect Framework which allowed the graphics programmer to create effect files (.fx) that combined vertex, pixel, and geometry shaders in a single file.

DirectX 11 was released in October 2009 together with Shader Model 5.0. Shader Model 5.0 extended the vertex, pixel, and geometry shaders of Shader Model 4.0 as well as introduce tessellation and compute shader profiles. Tessellation shaders provide the functionality to progressively refine the detail of a mesh at run-time while the compute shaders provide a general-purpose compute language that is executed on the GPU instead of the CPU.

On March 20, 2014, Microsoft will announce the release of DirectX 12.（这篇文章写于2014年之前）