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No, Dx10.1 requires new hardware to utilize the new features. The current 8 series cards (including the new 8800GT) can only use the Dx10 feature set.

I probably wouldn't worry to much about it though, considering how well Dx10 is doing at the moment, there probably won't be a huge rush of Dx10.1 games any time soon I think

A DirectX 10 card will be able to use the DirectX 10.1 features that is in common with DirectX 10.

So only the (very small) subset of unique DirectX 10.1 features won't be usable by a DirectX 10 card. Actually, DirectX 10.1 is in part just a tighter definition of the *required* features of a graphics card, and I wouldn't be surprised if many DirectX 10 cards already have those. Like obligatory support for 4xFSAA. That's in DirectX 10.1, but not DirectX 10. Still, I bet most if not all Geforce 8's have that already?

Here's more: http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=42004

There are no new features. Just bug fixes and tighter specs.

You got that right about the decrease in performance. Where is the touted increase it was going to give us? All I have seen in Vista is lower performance compared to XP even after a years worth of driver releases. For shame Microsoft and nVidia.

edit: Anyone who says that games run better then in XP is just plain lying out of their a****, simple as that.

People were saying similar things about SM3.0. 3 years later and there's a bunch of ATI users crying because Bioshock doesn't work.

Really? I never would have imagined that by increasing the visual effects it would slow down performance. There has always been a tradeoff between visual quality and performance when it comes to games. You don't seem to understand that DX10 improves the visual quality, not the performance. It's like complaining that you lower your fps when enabling anti-aliasing.

What? It's a serious rearchitecturing of how DirectX works. Previous versions have run on newer frameworks, they've made so many changes here that that is not the case.

Wow you are clueless. No, it's not DX9 with an OS check. Yes, you can enable some of the features but not all, and the ones you can only run in software and not hardware.
Most games out now are hybrid games. Built for DX9 but work on DX10. You won't really see big differences until games are exclusively DX10 and programmers have time to use all the new features.

No, there is also no 10% performance loss in Vista. For me I have 0 performance loss over XP. In some cases I even have better FPS. It was all about getting better drivers and those are here.

Pure dx10 games......world in conflict.......crysis.....

Oh, yes... Crysis is a pure DirectX 10 game. That's why it runs on XP.

World In Conflict runs on XP too.

A "Pure" DX 10 game would be one that can only run under DX 10. And so far, there's no such animal.

Those games are not 'pure' DX10 games. They are DX9 games with DX10 effects. Pure DX10 games will require you to be on Vista with a DX10 capable video card. And as far as I know, these games can be run on Windows XP with a DX9 card.

I don't really like the thing about "pure" Direct-something games. Because you don't write games only using DX10 effects, because even DirectX 10 is an evolutionary release. You can't even really write a game that makes any sort of sense in the normal meaning of the word by only using DirectX 10 API functions, even if you wanted to.

Yes, DX10 requires a new driver model, but most of the software API is still shared with previous versions of DirectX.

There's nothing stopping a game developer from requiring Vista + DX10 though, but I don't see a compelling reason to enforce such a thing, besides for saving time and Quality Assurance checks in verifying it looks reasonable without the DX10 effects.

Compare to programming for Win32. Yes, you can use new Vista API functions and now your app will require Vista unless you write fallback mechanisms. But that still doesn't make it a "pure" Vista app in the sense that it *only* uses the new Vista API functions. Most of the Win32 API use the same functions since Windows NT 4. A Vista app could be an app that uses a blend of Windows NT 4 / 2000 / XP / Vista features, but it's Vista that becomes the lowest common denominator, hence that OS is required.

In the same fashion, DX10 games of course may and will use DX8/DX9/etc features, and they'll never be "pure" in that they only use the new and latest stuff. I'd rather than calling it "pure" just call it something that requires DirectX 10.

Last edited by Jugalator on 31 Oct 2007 - 15:43

As the article mentioned, they used leaked AMD's white paper on Direct X 10.1 and intro to HD3800 series. Nothing's wrong with the credibility here.

"If you have a poop video card vista experience normal sucks."

If you have a rubbish video card, you turn Aero off.