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DirectX 11 announced, Compatible with DX10 hardware

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http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19522

During its Gamefest 2008 developer conference in Seattle, Microsoft officially announced DirectX 11, the newest version of its multimedia API package. Like its predecessor DirectX 10, it will be exclusive to Windows Vista "as well as future versions of Windows."

Features include new shader technology that begins to allow developers to position GPUs as more general-purpose parallel processors, rather than being dedicated solely to graphics processing; better multi-threading capabilities; and hardware-based tesselation.

Said newly promoted Microsoft's Entertainment Business Division CTO Chris Satchell during a Gamefest keynote, "We want to break away from purely having a paradigm of pixels, vertices and shaders."

DirectX 10, which was first released in 2006, required DX10-specific hardware, creating a clearly-defined split between it and DX9. "We created a discontinuity; that was deliberate," Satchell said during his address, but DX11 will be compatible with DX10 hardware.

"DX11 is totally compatible with DX10. There's not that 9/10 discontinuity we created before," he said.
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wasn't expecting that, bit strange really. no XP of course
 
It isn't!

What it means is you will be able to run DX11 on DX10 hardware but not run DX11 software in DX11 mode the same way you can't run 10.1 software on 10.0 card,

It is just "compatible" with dx11 not "capable" of dx11.

Or am I misunderstanding ?
 
mrk said:
It isn't!

What it means is you will be able to run DX11 on DX10 hardware but not run DX11 software in DX11 mode the same way you can't run 10.1 software on 10.0 card,

It is just "compatible" with dx11 not "capable" of dx11.

Or am I misunderstanding ?
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I believe it depends on the features of the cards, for example, with a driver update current DX10 cards are probably capable of using the shader compute part of DX11, or the current Radeons with their for-the-most-part unused hardware tessellation unit. Edit: Could be wrong though.
 
mrk said:
It isn't!

What it means is you will be able to run DX11 on DX10 hardware but not run DX11 software in DX11 mode the same way you can't run 10.1 software on 10.0 card,

It is just "compatible" with dx11 not "capable" of dx11.

Or am I misunderstanding ?
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The guy from Microsoft says there's no 9/10 discounuity as before, so presumably this is just like DirectX 9-9c? Where features change but the core hardware can still run it?
 
reflux said:
The guy from Microsoft says there's no 9/10 discounuity as before, so presumably this is just like DirectX 9-9c? Where features change but the core hardware can still run it?
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What happens to 10.1 then? does it magically become invisible? :P
 
Sure dx11 will contain the 10.1 stuff. Both companies can do various parts of 10.1 anyway, and not including it would be a backward step given some useful functions it has.

Matthew
 
Well I have yet to upgrade my 8800GT after hearing of the DX11 announcement so here's hoping it has some extra performance to be unlocked by GPGPU and family!
 
Back to the days of DX 5-6-7 then.

Wasnt it 7 when the geforce cards came out and all this compatibility rubbish started?
 
The_Abyss said:
Good news all round. I don't think the release of DX11 is tied to that of Windows 7 though.
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Not in any other way than a release date though, of course it will work with Vista seeing as the hardware model is the same, that's what prompted DX10 to be Vista exclusive.
 
Its not fully compatible though, Tessellation and SM 5.0 won't work on Dx10 cards.

Its just like Dx10 games working on Dx9 cards, they just run in Dx9 as they can't do 10.
 
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WHat it means is, games right now have to be writen to support DX10 OR DX9. if writen to work in DX9 they don't actively have to support DX8/7/6 or previous versions, if you have a crappy card it will still generally allow you to play with various features disabled, lighting, etc, etc, etc. THey are compatible in the sense that DX9 code incorporates all of dx6/dx7/dx8 so when you right for it you're basically writing for all cards. When you write for DX10 it DOENS'T ever in any way work on previous DX versions, you have to write different code to make it run on other hardware. Thats what it means by it was previously incompatible, its a lot of extra work as games makes have to make two separate versions of a lot of bits.

What this means is, if you write in DX11, it will automatically run on DX10 hardware, in dx10 mode without any extra work being done. In the long run it means when we get up to DX13 and no one on earth has anything below DX10 hardware anymore they can write for only dx13 and it will work on every card between DX10 and dx13 without any extra work being done which will only be good for developers.

If there was a way to make it fully compatible with dx9 stuff aswell, no one will really ever know. Its not surprising that at some point one version would break the mould and need to essentially start from scratch, theres only so much you can do built on layers and layers of old code before needed a fresh start.
 
tmaxxthomson said:
tessellation may work on the ati cards tho going by what was said earlier about them having an unused tessellation unit?
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I had this very discussion before over at XS & it maybe that the DX11 tessellation maybe different enough for it not to work with DX10.1 tessellation.
 
drunkenmaster said:
WHat it means is, games right now have to be writen to support DX10 OR DX9. if writen to work in DX9 they don't actively have to support DX8/7/6 or previous versions, if you have a crappy card it will still generally allow you to play with various features disabled, lighting, etc, etc, etc. THey are compatible in the sense that DX9 code incorporates all of dx6/dx7/dx8 so when you right for it you're basically writing for all cards. When you write for DX10 it DOENS'T ever in any way work on previous DX versions, you have to write different code to make it run on other hardware. Thats what it means by it was previously incompatible, its a lot of extra work as games makes have to make two separate versions of a lot of bits.

What this means is, if you write in DX11, it will automatically run on DX10 hardware, in dx10 mode without any extra work being done. In the long run it means when we get up to DX13 and no one on earth has anything below DX10 hardware anymore they can write for only dx13 and it will work on every card between DX10 and dx13 without any extra work being done which will only be good for developers.

If there was a way to make it fully compatible with dx9 stuff aswell, no one will really ever know. Its not surprising that at some point one version would break the mould and need to essentially start from scratch, theres only so much you can do built on layers and layers of old code before needed a fresh start.
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We may of seen more Dx10 games with better usage if it was not for the problem of 10 or 9 & not both.
 
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