DX10....Why??

panthro

panthro

panthro

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I put this in software because DX10 is just software...right?

I want to know whats so great about DX10 that should justify me buying a new GFX card and Vista. Can someone please explain to a simpleton like me why its so hyped up?

I might buy a DX10 card but wait for a while for more support to come out for it before I buy Vista. Good plan?
 
DX10 is a completely different to DX9 in that enables tons of new effects

there are however no Direct X 10 games currently available

so buying an 8800GTX and Vista for DX10 is a little pointless

could however buy them, simply for the fact the 8800GTX is also the fastest DX9 card currently in production, and vista for the fact its the new MS operating system, irrespective of it comming with DX10 as well.

have a look for the screenshots of upcomming DX10 games, including UT2007. They'll speak for themselves.
 
I've wondered this as well.

What does Dx10 offer? I thought it was just faster due to the way it rendered things, rather than giving any tangiable visual differences.
 
MrLOL said:
DX10 is a completely different to DX9 in that enables tons of new effects

have a look for the screenshots of upcomming DX10 games, including UT2007. They'll speak for themselves.
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will they?

how much different do you think they will look in DX9 vs DX10 modes? not massively tbh,

AFAIK its simply a faster and more efficient render with a few bits and poeces thrown in.

I await correction.
 
one of the biggest advantages of DX10 is that allows physics calculations to be done by the GPU

want your water to moove realisticly ? sure, your GPU can do the physics calculations to make the puddle behave realisticly, and reactionally to your input.

DX10 also allows geometry shaders and allows morphing as well.

and the improvements in the DX10 code allow the same effects applied in DX9, to be applied over much bigger distances as well

it all adds up to quite a drastic visual difference, not just an FPS increase.
 
So some of the features of DX10:-



Fixed pipelines are being done away with in favor of fully programmable pipelines (often referred to as unified pipeline architecture), which can be programmed to emulate the same.

Paging of graphics memory, to allow data to be loaded to Video RAM when needed and move it out when not needed. This enables usage of the system memory to hold graphics data, such as textures, thereby allowing use of more and higher resolution textures in games.

There is no limit on the number of objects which can be rendered, provided enough resources are available.

Virtualization of the graphics hardware, to allow multiple threads/processes to use it, in turns.

New state object to enable the GPU to change states efficiently.

Shader model 4.0, enhances the programmability of the graphics pipeline. It adds instructions for integer and bitwise calculations.

Geometry shaders, which work on individual triangles which form a mesh.

Texture arrays enable swapping of textures in GPU without CPU intervention.

Resource View enables pre-caching of resources, thereby reducing latency.

Predicated Rendering allows drawing calls to be ignored based on some other conditions. This enables rapid occlusion culling, which prevents objects from being rendered if it is not visible or too far to be visible.

Instancing 2.0 support, allowing multiple instances of similar meshes, such as armies, or grass or trees, to be rendered in a single draw cell, reducing the processing time needed for multiple similar objects to that of a single one.



All sound like good stuff to me ;) (but to be honest I don't know much about GFX cards)

I guess time will tell how many features developers choose to incorporate in their games.

HEADRAT
 
panthro said:
I put this in software because DX10 is just software...right?

I want to know whats so great about DX10 that should justify me buying a new GFX card and Vista. Can someone please explain to a simpleton like me why its so hyped up?
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Dunno, but every new version of DX is hyped to hell, as if it is the second coming of Christ...
 
I was reading about D10 that it takes away the bottleneck of CPU by using GPU for calculations etc....so does that means games will run great on systems with modest CPU? Hope so!
 
barnettgs said:
I was reading about D10 that it takes away the bottleneck of CPU by using GPU for calculations etc....so does that means games will run great on systems with modest CPU? Hope so!
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nope

as it will only be in games that are written for direct X. And with existing hardware available to them, instead of keeping the features set at the same level, and increase their availability to lower GPUs, i expect developers will be raising the bar the effects use, leaving old cards in the same position.

Direct X increases the ammount of performance available to a given GPU, but most new games coded in DX10, will likely just use this to add extra effects, rather than making those effects run on older cards. Heck there wont be "older" cards that can run DX10 for a long time. theres currently only 1 DX10 card lol.
 
Aren't we still waiting for games which are hugely better in DX9 than in DX8?

It will probably be years before DX10 is needed, because games will be written for the mass market*. By the time DX10 is mainstream, Vista will be on its way out, I bet.

(*not that PC gaming is very 'mass market' any more; rather, it is an expensive and dwindling niche market.)
 
dirtydog said:
Aren't we still waiting for games which are hugely better in DX9 than in DX8?
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Far Cry and FEAR are perfect examples of games which use DX9 extremely well.
 
Zefan said:
Far Cry and FEAR are perfect examples of games which use DX9 extremely well.
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How is Far Cry better in DX9 vs DX8? I'm not saying it isn't, I'm curious :) I remember it being one of the first big games which utilised DX8 effects.
 
HEADRAT said:
I don't suppose anybody has any numbers that show how many console gamers there are vs PC gamers?

HEADRAT
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Not me, but I gather that console games dominate stores nowadays, with PC games being relegated to last place.

PC gamers are the poor relation; they get old console hand-me-downs like Halo 2, years after it was on console. And which will doubtless require huge system requirements to run properly.
 
I read that WoW has more subscribers than there have been Xbox 360s sold. They might not be buying new games regularly, but there's a lot of PC Gamers out there.
 
A meaningful comparison would have to be games sales by revenue; not the number of people who could be called PC gamers :)
 
With the current advancements coming more and more it just worries me that game developers will not be encouraged to tidy and better code there games, as most of you i'm sure already know, a lot of top title games still seem unfinished or buggy to say the least and it can take several patches in some cases.

I hope increases in graphical technology is not at the cost of well coded games.
 
t31os said:
With the current advancements coming more and more it just worries me that game developers will not be encouraged to tidy and better code there games, as most of you i'm sure already know, a lot of top title games still seem unfinished or buggy to say the least and it can take several patches in some cases.

I hope increases in graphical technology is not at the cost of well coded games.
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That is an inherent problem with PC games. Developers can be lazy because they can just specify inflated system requirements to get the game to run acceptably. It has been this way for years and I don't see any reason to believe it will change.
 
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