Dx.10 & 7950GX2

[jimbonkers]

Hi,

I have a 7950GX2 and I was wondering when i should sell it to minimise the loss I make when DX. 10 comes outs??

When will the Dx. 10 cards come out?

 

[locutus12]

well, to be honest it was a bad idea to buy it in the first place but alls well with heinsight i guess.

it all depends, what are you planning to use in its place ? your cards price wont drop too much for a while yet, at least not untill thwey launch G80 and R600.

 

[Rob43]

A while before DX10 comes along yet & it will take a while longer before games start to fully use it anyway.Your card should do you a good while yet

Rob

 

[mrthingyx]

It's going to wind up similar to the DX9 debacle...

The protocol/standard will be rolled out by Microsoft whenever the next Windows version makes the light of day, but it will take at least another year or so for developers to finally start implementing it in anything other than partial form.

DX9 was heralded as a massive improvement in graphical ability (and on paper, it was) but very few developers really got going with it for a quite a while. It only seems to have been fully implemented with the advent of Half Life 2 and a few other titles. If my memory serves me correctly, the Doom 3 engine (and therefore Quake 4 and whatnot) is not even based on the DX9 standard but something like DX7.

Will you notice a huge difference when DX10 comes out (mid-next year)? Probably not. Nvidia will brew up a patch for all their recent cards to devolve the simpler DX10 coding and allow the cards to run it in partial form... giving a performance decrease. But seeing as you're using a 7950, that's not really a concern.

I don't think you're going to have anything to worry about for at least three years. But then, I have a Radeon 9600Xt and have no real need to upgrade it until the next version of Windows.

 

[lay-z-boy]

depends when you move to vista and how many dx10 titles you buy.

xp wont have dx10 and vista will probably end up like xp, ie. best to start using it after sp1.

If you intend to move to vista instantly then i advise to go to a temp value card a week or 2-3 before g80.

 

[Dave2150]

If my memory serves me correctly, the Doom 3 engine (and therefore Quake 4 and whatnot) is not even based on the DX9 standard but something like DX7.

Doom3 is build on OpenGL, not DX.

Nvidia will brew up a patch for all their recent cards to devolve the simpler DX10 coding and allow the cards to run it in partial form... giving a performance decrease. But seeing as you're using a 7950, that's not really a concern.

.

You cant patch a card into running hardware DX10 commands.

The card will either support the dx10 hardware features or not.

So the effects will run if you have a dx10 card, if you dont, it will use dx9, etc.

Just like dx9 and 8 is working today.

 

[BubbySoup]

I think he means running the DX10 features in software, much like developers have to do right now as they have no DX10 hardware to actually use.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

No need to sell it yet, your card will last well into next year, DX10 cards are supposed to be coming end of year, but if your card is already cutting it at DX9 then why get one, as your only going to be running the same DX9 games, just faster, but if they are already running fast enough on your 7950 as said then theres no point, i would'nt lash out £400+ just to run Vista, and Crysis's DX10 features, probably be only a couple of features at best, and by the time theres more DX10 games around you'll have to lash out £400+ again as your DX10 card will be old hat and not run em well.

Id get a DX10 card when theres actually something out worth getting one for, Vista and Crysis are not that, DX10 games are not going to be flooding out, there might be about 5x by next Christmas, and im probably being to generous there, and how many new cards would have come and gone by then, exactly cards are coming every couple of months, you get all the speedbumped jobs etc....

 

[BubbySoup]

Interesting article over at ExtremeTech - they asked several of the lead game developers about DX10 and it seems all of the 1st gen DX10 games are basically using DX10 to bolt a few features onto what is essentially, a DX9 game. Look at this quote from Cevat Yerli, president of Crytek.

ExtremeTech: By the time DX10 hardware is available to develop on in earnest, your game will be nearly done. Obviously, the degree to which you can exploit it is limited. Do you hope to do more with DX10 in maybe a Crysisexpansion pack, or will we have to wait for the next Crytek game to see more elaborate DX10 utilization?

Yerli: Crysiswill ship with features that are exclusive to DX10, however, ultimately we will develop more elegant solutions with time coming forward, since we have implementation ideas that at this stage would fight our DX9 implementation. Hence we will improve DX10 even more after Crysisships through patches, but only if the DX10 hardware base is big enough to reduce focus on DX9. Probably a year will have to pass by.

I doubt we will see any games built from the ground up with DX10 in mind until we are on the 3rd gen of DX10 cards, by which time the 1st gen ones will be "slow".

Of course, "slow" is all relative now isn't it.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

^ Yup as i said they are going to be DX9 games, with a couple of DX10 features, the only game i know of that is solely DX10, and will only work with DX10, Vista is Halo 3, definately not worth shelling out £400+ for, not one game anyway, wait till DX10 is used more beofre going the DX10 route, especially if you have a DX9 card already that runs everything thrown at it as said.

x1800 XT 512mb here, throws everything around, i wont be jumping on the DX10 card bandwaggon yet, not for a good while, and by the time i do the first wave of DX10 cards will be a distant memory.

You may as well just play the games in DX9 and forget about a couple of DX10 features, look at how good Crysis looks on DX9 for example anyway.

 

[Boogle]

MS are doing the DX10 > DX9 stuff for cards with drivers that refuse to acknowledge the new Vista graphics driver model.

Fortunately the vast majority (if not all) of the SM2 and above graphics cards all have drivers for Vista either right now, or fairly soon. So thats native DX10 support, albeit without supporting all the features. Like a DX8 card with DX9 installed.