DX10 on XP

gurusan · 13 Jun 2007 at 19:06

So at another forum some guy keeps saying that DX10 will eventually be released for XP...and fails to back his argument up (TBH haven't pressed him too much because I don't know a whole lot on the subject myself).

Anyway...is there any shred of truth in this? Can someone explain why or why not and point me to some resources to disprove this myth?

Steedie · 13 Jun 2007 at 19:18

DirectX 10 CAN NOT be ran on XP unless it is done under emulation, which is possible. Possible but pointless as you lose about 90% of the performance

gurusan · 13 Jun 2007 at 20:24

Steedie said:
DirectX 10 CAN NOT be ran on XP unless it is done under emulation, which is possible. Possible but pointless as you lose about 90% of the performance

ok I know it can't...but why exactly?

Teaf · 13 Jun 2007 at 20:28

It's actually part of Vista, you could try to rip it out of Vista and reproduce it but as Steedie says, the performance would suffer massively. DX10 is built into Vista, and specifically for Vista.

eggcup · 13 Jun 2007 at 20:29

The current driver model on the Windows XP is the limitation. One of the key points of Direct X 10 is to be the ability to have more independent objects and the current driver model on Windows XP simply won't be able to deal with it.

NathanE · 13 Jun 2007 at 20:36

About 20% of DX10 exists as core kernel code in Vista. It is non-trivial and commercially unviable to update XP's kernel to support these enhancements without breaking compatibility with existing software and games.

Macro · 13 Jun 2007 at 20:42

As i understand it, and I could be wrong, the attempts to run DX10 on XP so far have in effect been DX10 emulation using the CPU to fill the gap. As with almost all emulation trying reproduce new technology on old the performance hit is massive.

To be honest there's nothing I'd like to see more than MS best and brightest from research and dev build a brand new x64 OS from the ground up with no backward compatability and baggage.

I guess it'd be commercial sucide and would never happen (let's face it - no exec is ever going to risk ending his career by doing it) but I can't help but feel a clean break would be a good thing. You could always provide backwards x86/traditional windows support via Softgrid/virtualisation.

UnusualSuspect · 14 Jun 2007 at 19:22

I think the main reason DX10 can't be ported over to XP is because of the way it interacts with drivers. Vista and XP have completely different ways of talking to drivers and, in effect, hardware, so they'd pretty much have to recode DX10 if they wanted it to run on XP. Which, of course, would no doubt cause a massive performance hit and not make it even slightly worthwhile.

Thats why DX10 is an integral part of Vista, because the whole system, from the OS to drivers and anything in between, is all meshed into one. XP its all done in layers.