DirectX9 is not easy at all, it's almost Glide/Vulkan like low level-ish API. But hey. that's "bullshit". My balls. The above user should try running a pure DX9 game with Wine and GL 2.1 on a Intel Mobile 4 series with no noticeable frame drops. I tried. Hard.

But also, having DX7/8 being almost 100% compatible back in the day was a huge step on stability vs Windows 98, even if the RAM and CPU usage were higher. DX run fast, so did Max Payne.