Gaming in DX9 under Vista ?

OutpostCommand · 2 Sep 2007 at 19:43

Hi.
Ive got a new PC being built for me and it is being delivered in about 7 days.
Right, to the point.
Its coming with Vista Ultimate.

I have however seen a Bioshock comparison on FiringSquad, and it showed some kind of rendering cockup that when Bioshock was ran in DX9 under Vista, water effects looked TERRIBLE.

Now, please assure me and lower my blood pressure -
is this a isolated incident, or will all DX9 games under Vista have some kind of artifacts or defects ?

Cheers in advance.

killer_uk · 2 Sep 2007 at 19:58

I'm not 100% sure on the issue you are on about, however this will be a problem with the game rather than Vista. Vista fully supports both dx 9 and 10

OutpostCommand · 2 Sep 2007 at 20:07

Thats good to know, and perhaps I can sit more comfortably in my chair now.
The issue is this: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/bioshock_mainstream_gpu_performance/page6.asp

About halfway down the page.

Reading the notes, I dont fully understand, but it seems that forcing DX9 to run something (presumably under DX10) causes something to go wrong.

However, it does seem that its to do with the game.

Whew

manic111 · 2 Sep 2007 at 20:30

Im running an X1950PRO on Vista, and everything looks great. I have downloaded the Bioshock demo and, again, it looks fantastic, water and all.

mdjmcnally · 2 Sep 2007 at 23:45

Reading the article then it only appears to be if you have a DX10 card and force to run in DX9 mode under Vista.

Don't know if I am missing something but if you have a DX10 card like 8800 or 2900 why would you manually force the game to run in DX9.

Frank Grimes · 2 Sep 2007 at 23:53

problems will be with the videocard drivers rather than the game. Installed Vista this week and it seems OK, Company of Heroes was smooth, no performance issues. GRAW 2 on the other hand kills the video card driver when dynamic shadows are enabled. I never had this problem in XP. Thats with a nvidia 7-series graphics card.

The $6m Dan · 3 Sep 2007 at 09:41

mdjmcnally said:
Reading the article then it only appears to be if you have a DX10 card and force to run in DX9 mode under Vista.

Don't know if I am missing something but if you have a DX10 card like 8800 or 2900 why would you manually force the game to run in DX9.

Perhaps this is an issue with ;lower spec cards like the 8200 etc.
Having said that thought DX10 was supposed to be more efficient so I'd expect better performance under DX10.

SS-89 · 3 Sep 2007 at 10:48

Nope that is the water ripple effect of dx9 which is hideous yes but you get that when running in dx9 only whether in Vista or XP that is what water ripples look like in dx9, the dynamic water ripples are only available in dx10...the dx9/dx10 hybrid they mention is simply turning off dx10 detail surfaces in the in game menu which means its still using the dx10 codepath in Vista.

Phil2008 · 3 Sep 2007 at 13:29

Ive just upgaded to vista, so does my ati 1900xt support dx10??

Mattus · 3 Sep 2007 at 14:16

speedy2004 said:
Ive just upgaded to vista, so does my ati 1900xt support dx10??

Nope. Only the HD 2xxx series support DX10.

OutpostCommand · 3 Sep 2007 at 15:23

SS-89 said:
Nope that is the water ripple effect of dx9 which is hideous yes but you get that when running in dx9 only whether in Vista or XP that is what water ripples look like in dx9, the dynamic water ripples are only available in dx10...the dx9/dx10 hybrid they mention is simply turning off dx10 detail surfaces in the in game menu which means its still using the dx10 codepath in Vista.

Aha. That is reassuring to know. Thank you.