DX10 vs DX11

imamosher · 29 Mar 2010 at 20:42

Is it just me or does DX10 look far clearer in this video, I watched at 720p

theheyes · 29 Mar 2010 at 20:51

The DX10 stuff looks sharper but I did notice a few improvements on the DX11 side. To be honest it's a crap comparison video more than anything.

imamosher · 29 Mar 2010 at 21:09

I looked at a couple others and there rally doesnt seem to be much difference between 10 and 11, I remember there was a huge jump between 9 and 10 but this time its not as noticable.

Azuse05 · 29 Mar 2010 at 21:22

imamosher said:
I looked at a couple others and there rally doesnt seem to be much difference between 10 and 11, I remember there was a huge jump between 9 and 10 but this time its not as noticable.

It's far more noticeable, it's just not being used since so many games are built with/for consoles and they're still using dx9. Most dx10/11 on the pc is thrown in as an afterthought sadly.

The biggest problem with nvidias new gpu (heat/price aside, every first gen card has always had these issues) is there there's no software around to use it. It can chew through tessellation at a wonderful rate but ther's no games around using it.

Run the heaven demo, turn tessellation etc. on/off and you'll see the difference. You just have to wait for a company to make a game actually using them. *crosses fingers for crysis 2*

imamosher · 29 Mar 2010 at 21:29

Im not entirely sure what version of DX is currently being used by the consoles but from what you are saying we would have to wait for the next gen of consoles to come through utilizing DX11 and then we will see devolpers start to make more DX11 games available to pc.

Didnt read the first line of your post correctly, consoles stillusing DX9

Azuse05 · 29 Mar 2010 at 21:40

Essentially that's the problem. To quote a certain site..

To the dismay of many a PC gamer, the vast majority of developers have in recent years become devoted to creating games primary for consoles - particularly Microsoft's DirectX-driven Xbox 360.

Hoping to maximise profits, one could argue that developers have opted to shun the PC marketplace - which has admittedly been plagued with piracy for many years - in favour of the high margins available via console releases. Driving that point home, last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 became the biggest entertainment launch in history, but first-day PC sales were reported to account for less than five per cent of the overall $310 million haul.

Why is a developer's focus on games consoles a concern for PC users? Well, both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 utilise older GPU technology. Microsoft's console makes use of an ATI Xenos GPU that resembles the 2006 PC graphics card ATI Radeon X1900, whilst the PlayStation 3 features an RSX Reality Synthesiser GPU based on NVIDIA's GeForce 7800 architecture. Importantly, both chips only offer support for DirectX 9.0c, and as a result developers continue to create games using an API and shader model first introduced in 2004.

Unfortunately, that means many of the games being played on your £400 DirectX 11 GPU were actually created from the ground up for DirectX 9. Any additional DirectX 11 features are likely to have been added at a later date, and improved visuals through technologies such as tessellation or NVIDIA PhysX are therefore likely to be little more than an afterthought. This increasingly-common occurrence is taking place on a vast number of PC games now referred to as simply "console ports".

Hardware development will of course always remain a step ahead of software releases, and there's a case to be made for upcoming PC titles that may make full use of GeForce GTX 480 features, but can you name a single one?

Despite the numerous criticisms fired at NVIDIA's latest GPU, the most important appears to have been overlooked; there isn't anywhere near enough software support. Had GeForce GTX 480 launched alongside a big-name PC exclusive - imagine Half-Life 3 built from the ground up to take advantage of DirectX 11's array of technologies - it would have made perfect sense, and there may have been good reason to rush out and buy one. As it stands, it's a graphics card that offers a couple of extra frames per second, and little else.

The list of DirectX 11-compatible titles remains bleak, and the console ports currently on offer can in most cases be played back with the highest detail settings on a lesser, cheaper GPU, such as AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5850.

If you've ever wondered about the state of the enthusiast PC gaming marketplace; consider this, NVIDIA has launched the fastest single GPU ever known to man, but we're struggling to think of compelling reasons to buy one.

The worrying truth for PC gamers is that the buzz words of today - tessellation, realtime physics and interactive ray-tracing - may not be fully realised in terms of software until we see a new generation of games console.

There's plenty of videos on youtube showing the Heaven benchmark 2.0. Pity that's the best place to see dx11 atm

Also, shouldn't this be in the graphics section?

imamosher · 29 Mar 2010 at 21:42

Azuse05 said:
Essentially that's the problem. To quote a certain site..

There's plenty of videos on youtube showing the Heaven benchmark 2.0. Pity that's the best place to see dx11 atm

Also, shouldn't this be in the graphics section?

I beleive DX is software