Direct X 10.1

[RikiRude]

I'm sure a few of you have heard about this, but I was wondering if anyone also heard that Direct X 10.1 won't be compatable with current video cards. Someone at work mentioned it as I was complaining that my ATi x850 cannot play Bioshock OR MoH:AB because it doesn't have the 3.0 shader or whatever.

Anyways I mentioned I was probably going to get the 8800 and he was like well it was said that Direct X 10.1 might not be supported on current cards so you might want to wait.

What does this mean exactly, would it really be worth holding out, then having to get an even more expensive card? Or Would it be better to get a $200-300 card and just hold out til DX10.1 is actually taken advantage of?

I'm trying to find an article that talks about it, but here is some discussion on it.

http://www.istartedsomething.com/200...-101-siggraph/

[JS.Fortnight.A]

DirectX 10.1 Requires No New GPU.
But DirectX 10.1 Video Card Is Recommended

Category: Video

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 08/15/2007 | 12:38 PM ]


At SIGGRAPH 2007 conference Microsoft announced the details of the new DirectX updates version 10.1. They pointed out that to ensure full support of DirectX 10.1 you need not only to install Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista, but you may also need to replace a graphics card. Contemporary graphics accelerators from Nvidia GeForce 8800 and AMD/ATI Radeon 2900 may not support all the new features added to Direct3D 10.1.

Next-Gen web-site made certain things clear thanks to their phone interview with Microsoft's Sam Glassenberg, who said: "DirectX 10.1 fully supports DirectX 10 hardware. No hardware support is being removed. It's strictly a superset. It's basically an update to DirectX 10 that extends the hardware functionality slightly."

According to Sam Glassenberg, DirectX 10.1 will be fully compatible with all graphics cards supporting DirectX 10. He told that the current updates are very similar to those performed for DirectX 9 back in the days. All the company wants to do now is to increase the API life cycle. This statement was addressed to majority of worried gamers who got the impression that Microsoft announced GeForce 8800 and Radeon 2900 based graphics cards may become useless after the new updates have been pushed. However, Sam confirmed that existing graphics cards may still not be able to use all the new features of DirectX 10.1. At the same time he stress that applications designed specifically for DirectX 10.1 are very unlikely to appear, because overall, the updates aren’t that critical.

So, although DirectX 10.1 will support current DirectX 10 graphics hardware, today's DirectX 10 hardware will not be able to support all of the features of DirectX 10.1, which includes incremental improvements to 3D rendering quality.

However, the gamers who have already acquired contemporary DirectX 10 graphics accelerators shouldn’t be too upset. Upon developers’ request, version 10.1 sets whatever was available in the previous releases as a standard. As for the innovations, among them are 32-bit floating-point operations (instead of 16-bit ones, used today by default) and obligatory support of 4x FSAA.

Link: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/d...815123340.html

Well I'm somewhat dismayed, I just got my HD 2900XT, so this is almost as crappy a move as; when shortly after releasing BF2, EA & Dice announced BF2142

But of course, we'll get over it.

[unrealalex]

No dont worry. DX 10.1's visual differences will be tiny, and developers will barely focus on it. 8800 series sold very well, they aren't just going to be left behind in terms of development.

[RikiRude]

So this leads me to ask, should I go all out and still get my 8800 GTX or just get a GTS til newer models come out?

*edit my post was a bit late* Mmm I can almost taste that GTX!

[nicoliani]

Are there cards out now that support DX 10.1?

[Deadfast]

Radeon 3xxx series and higher.

[jOHNNYdOUBE]

Yeah, I got 2 ATI HD3870 and they use Direct X10.1 .

[[R-CON]Desertfox]

Will the new GTX280 and 260 use 10.1? Also, stupid question but do you need vista to run dx10/dx10.1?

[[R-DEV]Cheeseman]

Originally Posted by [R-CON]Desertfox

Will the new GTX280 and 260 use 10.1? Also, stupid question but do you need vista to run dx10/dx10.1?

Yes, you need Vista to run DirectX10 and Vista Service Pack 1 for DirectX10.1 if you have the hardware that supports it. Sadly I purchased a notebook too soon as my Geforce 9 series card only supports Dx10.

I blame Canada, because the same laptop also had the option of an ATi Radeon HD 3650 which supports Dx10.1, but it took forever for it to arrive in Canada.

[Deadfast]

Blame Microsoft.

It's not that long ago since they were talking about DX10.1.

If you read between the lines, something like "You don't need a card that supports it because it's pretty much useless" came out...