August 2008 has been synonymous with three separate releases of DirectX for a variety of Windows operating systems. The DirectX refreshes are tailored to Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Windows Server 2008 RTM/SP1, but also to Windows Server 2003.

Microsoft made available for download updated versions of the DirectX Software Development Kit, the DirectX End-User Runtimes, as well as the DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer. The first two releases have been re-published on the Microsoft Download Center on August 18, 2008, while the last one is available in the same form as when it went live on August 8.

DirectX End-User Runtimes (August 2008) "provides the DirectX end-user multi-languaged redistributable that developers can include with their product. The redistributable license agreement covers the terms under which developers may use the Redistributable. This package is localized into Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Swedish, and English. [...] The DirectX redist installation includes all the latest and previous released DirectX runtime. This includes the bi-monthly D3DX, XInput, and Managed DirectX components," Microsoft informed.

Back in July 2007, Microsoft altered the release schedule for DirectX. Until then, the Redmond giant had made a habit out of delivering updates on a monthly basis. Starting with the second half of the past year, DirectX refreshes started becoming available at the pace of just one every four months, a new tradition from which Microsoft has not diverged since.

The DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer is designed to bring to the table updates to version 9.0 of the graphics technology. Similarly, the DirectX software development kit delivers all the tools and documentation necessary for developers to build solutions taking advantage of the Windows graphics technology.

DirectX Software Development Kit is available for download here.

DirectX End-User Runtimes (August 2008) can be grabbed from here.

DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer is available here.