Beyond Microsoft DirectX® 9.0c

[Big.Wayne]

Hello,

I'm interested to know what the key selling points of Microsoft DirectX® 10/11 are please? . . .

I'm currently using Windows XP 32-bit & Microsoft DirectX® 9.0c so am interested to know of any good reasons from a gaming perspective that can "Justify" spending £80-£100 on a new O/S?

Thanks in advance for feedback!

 

[uv]

New DirectX revisions are not be the selling point of Win 7, they're just icing on a very nice cake. The new features in DX10/11 are not worthy of a £100 upgrade, but the many other benefits of using Win7 over XP are.

 

[Rroff]

Very little atm really... the vast majority of DX10/11 games either use it for slightly smoother shadows (not really noticeable outside of screenshots), tessellation, or 7-8% performance gains. Theres only a very small number of games using extensive DX10/11 features and most of them are naff (IMO).

It does have a lot of potential benefits tho, developers can render a huge number of lights with less passes than DX9 - in some cases just 1 pass which is a huge performance increase in complex scenes - which leads onto the entire deferred shading pipeline. Theres also improvements to multi-threaded useage which again can provide massive performance increases in the right scenarios making things possible in real time that would previously not be.

 

[Cosimo]

DX is just part of the package. How about the best Windows O/S to date, great performance, support for the latest games, bug free and a delight to use.

 

[TheRealDeal]

I would say the main benefits to gaming in windows 7 is just how stable the operating system is. I was one who did not want to move to windows 7 as i liked xp but since moving over i would never go back. I never crash in any game these days where as in xp would get the odd crash.

Dx10 gains you very little from dx9 but i think dx11 if used propely will take games forward from dx9.

 

[HAz]

Whats the point? you need a dx 10/11 card to take advantage of it anyway.
But windows 7 as a whole is a great upgrade from xp.

 

[arknor]

you give out advice on graphics cards and then come out and ask this? is it a trap so you can come out with a powerpoint presentation showing us why 64bit of and dx10/11 arent needed?

 

[Marvin]

you give out advice on graphics cards and then come out and ask this? is it a trap so you can come out with a powerpoint presentation showing us why 64bit of and dx10/11 arent needed?

'Twas my immediate thought I'll admit...

 

[JTrickle]

I'm going to agree. Civ5 is the only title I've noticed any difference over DX9. But perhaps I have been using DX10 games for the last year and not noticed?

£80 for a full stand alone Win7 was a reasonable deal, I thought. Will get 6-8 years out of it. Will still work on the 2nd machine even when I do upgrade. Cant keep using WinXP64 forever so figured I might as well buy into the new OS to begin with.

Its a much better OS than XP and worth it for the security and ease of use. The gaming DX10/11 stuff is just a fringe benefit. You will be forced into it within 2 years and its not going to cost any less then. The only argument for not capitulating is the rumoured 2 year time till Win8.

 

[Big.Wayne]

New DirectX revisions are not be the selling point of Win 7

Thanks uv . . . I'm aware of what other "selling points" the newer O/S offers although none of this "icing" works for me personally so wanted to concentrate specifically on DirectX® as a few people had told me one can't enjoy computer games if one doesn't use later versions . . .

Very little atm really... the vast majority of DX10/11 games either use it for slightly smoother shadows (not really noticeable outside of screenshots), tessellation, or 7-8% performance gains. Theres only a very small number of games using extensive DX10/11 features and most of them are naff (IMO)

Hmmm . . . considering your a game coder that's a pretty big thumbs down for DirectX®10/11 at this time . . . Having looked at how much extra vRam some games use when running under the newer DirectX® I got the impression they did something better? . . . why else would it eat more vRam if it didn't improve things in some way?

It does have a lot of potential benefits tho

Potential benefits are nice to know about . . . don't see anything really compelling today though?

I would say the main benefits to gaming in windows 7 is just how stable the operating system is

Never had that problem myself? . . . Games have always run fine for me under DirectX® 9.0c . . .

Dx10 gains you very little from dx9 but i think dx11 if used propely will take games forward from dx9.

Good to know . . .

But windows 7 as a whole is a great upgrade from xp.

Thanks HAz . . . as I said to uv I'm aware of the other bits n bobs but its no benefit for me at this time . . . really wanted to examine exactly what the new DirectX® versions offered and how it makes games better etc

 

[jorzeh]

Whack win7 on a SSD and go try it and tell me you want to keep XP

I think i'll just open 20 programs in 3 seconds for moackage

 

[Big.Wayne]

Thanks jorzeh . . . sadly this doesn't address the topic!

Rroff has concentrated on the topic quite well and given me some decent info . . .

 

[Rroff]

Hmmm . . . considering your a game coder that's a pretty big thumbs down for DirectX®10/11 at this time . . . Having looked at how much extra vRam some games use when running under the newer DirectX® I got the impression they did something better? . . . why else would it eat more vRam if it didn't improve things in some way?

I'm a little... eccentric... I believe that a lot of stuff can be done with older APIs if you think outside the box and put some real innovation and effort into it, helped by a good creative art pipeline. My influence is games like elite - pushing the boundaries of what is possible by being creative.

VRAM increases because your using newer and more complex features, often your working with a lot of buffer objects especially copies of the back/front buffer, etc. which can be several meg apiece, you can be generating higher resolution data, etc. as well compared to DX9 i.e. tessellation or other geometry shaders. In other cases it can just be the accumalitive effect of having data stored/processed with a higher precision.

As a Win XP diehard tho I do like Windows 7 and think it a worthwhile upgrade over XP despite hating vista with a passion, it seems a little more robust and funtional out the box.

 

[Freddie1980]

To put it simply games do look better when run in DirectX 11 end of, if you want you're games to look their best then upgrade to Windows 7. However for me to appreciate DX11 you have go back to DX9 to truly see what your missing out on.

Dirt 2, AvP and STALKER CoP all look fantastic I could never dream of going back to playing games at DX9. There's also the old war houre Crysis which granted is DX10 but when all the settings are maxed out the game still looks fantastic and you can't replacate that on XP which is limited to DX9.

 

[Rroff]

There are very few games out atm tho that are either worthwhile playing that need DX11 or are worthwhile in terms of DX10/11 features over the DX9 version of the game.

But then crysis, stalker, metro 2033 and civilisation have never appealed to me.

 

[Big.Wayne]

Hello Freddie1980

To put it simply games do look better when run in DirectX 11 end of

What do you mean "end of"? . . . that's not really a two way discussion is it!

if you want you're games to look their best then upgrade to Windows 7

Why though? . . . can you be more specific? . . . as well as how they look do they run just as smooth etc?

to appreciate DX11 you have go back to DX9 to truly see what your missing out on

Really? . . . . have you got any examples? . . . you make it sound like the difference is amazing and huge? . . .

Dirt 2, AvP and STALKER CoP all look fantastic I could never dream of going back to playing games at DX9

But why? . . . what is it exactly you talking about?

There's also the old war houre Crysis which granted is DX10 but when all the settings are maxed out the game still looks fantastic and you can't replacate that on XP which is limited to DX9.

Is that true? . . . didn't some people find out a simple edit that allowed a user to enable the features that were meant to be DirectX® 10 only? . . . I think they did?

 

[Big.Wayne]

There are very few games out atm tho that are either worthwhile playing that need DX11 or are worthwhile in terms of DX10/11 features over the DX9 version of the game.

Can you chuck us some technology terms please so I can go off and do some more research? . . . you mentioned something called tessellation? . . . is there any other buzzwords I should know about?

Also, what whould you say is the main reason someone would buy a DirectX® 11 GPU at this time? . . . is it to run DirectX® 9.0/10 titles faster or is there something out now that requires a new bit of hardware?

 

[arc@css]

Hi Big.Wayne.

I would say Windows 7 is a nice step-up since it is tailored better for the user, resulting in more user friendly software. Yes, some games look better in dx10 but in others there isn't a 'big' difference, though all in all I wouldn't want to 'go back' and lose dx10 since I can see the benefits in some of games I've played. I read that the benefit for dx11 is not yet greatly apparent, unsurprisingly since it's early days. I personally can't comment on this since my video card doesn't support it.

 

[Rroff]

Tessellation, Contact hardening shadows, advanced forms of Ambient Occlusion with much less of a performance hit compared to DX9/10. Then theres compute shaders - which can be used to accelerate effects that aren't supported in hardware and would normally have to be done slowly on the CPU. There quite a lot you can do with geometry shaders/displacement mapping, etc. that isn't really possible with decent performance under DX9.

For me tho buying a DX11 GPU has mostly been because they offer a good level of value for money for the performance while having some degree of future proofing potential.

 

[gareth170]

dx9

dx11

has u see theres a lot more detail in dx11