How good are DX10 cards going to be?

G

Garric

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 17, 2005
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My friend who appears to be quite well versed tells me that DX10 is going to make many DX9 cards obsolete and it's going to be quite more powerful than DX9 because DX10 is going to be very optimized for Vista and run the games very well. This disheartens me because I bought a 7800GT some time ago and I don't want it obsolete.

And how is thsi going to work, like it is now, where some games you can run in DX7 & 8 mode or even MORE drastic?
 
My friend who appears to be quite well versed tells me that DX10 is going to make many DX9 cards obsolete and it's going to be quite more powerful than DX9 because DX10 is going to be very optimized for Vista and run the games very well. This disheartens me because I bought a 7800GT some time ago and I don't want it obsolete.

And how is thsi going to work, like it is now, where some games you can run in DX7 & 8 mode or even MORE drastic?
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DX10 doesn't work like past D3D variations, it was made from the ground up and a very unified structure, its good and is something i would recommend supporting, your 7800GT won't be that outdated but if you are worried you can be rest assured it is already outdated, video cards get out dated as soon as 6 months

will it be slow? no, will it continue to play every game released for sometime to continue? yes, will it give all the bells and wistles? no

it will run Vista, but you won't be able to use the best UI it has to offer, which requires your card to be DX10 compliant to use

but i hope they dont suck as much as the x1800 did when it came out ,
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wow, just wow
 
You don't need a DX10 card to run Aero Glass in Vista. A DX9 card is all that is required.
 
benamaster said:
You don't need a DX10 card to run Aero Glass in Vista. A DX9 card is all that is required.
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umm i think he was more interested in the games
 
DX9.L in Vista will also give some performance boosts in DX9 games. So don't sell your graphics cards as soon as it comes out.
 
From what I read, DX10 will vastly improve performance on all hardware, but fully featured hardware will still perform better.

It looks like the only difference in cards need the ability to emulate a geometry shader and boom...2 to 6 times the performance. :)

Current hardware will work better with the vista driver model and DX10 than they currently do with DX9 on XP.
 
It looks like the only difference in cards need the ability to emulate a geometry shader and boom...2 to 6 times the performance.
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Say that to one of the engineers at ATi or NV. I'd give you 10 seconds before you're filleted alive by him or her. :p

D3D10 adds a lot more than just geometry shaders that will improve performance in some things. A lot of overhead involved with previous APIs should be gone, as well as very few restrictions regarding how the hardware is handled. Devs will be able to use a lot of tricks to get a lot out of the API, and it extends much, much farther than just adding geometry shaders (although they'll help a lot :D )

And how is thsi going to work, like it is now, where some games you can run in DX7 & 8 mode or even MORE drastic?
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It'll be far more drastic. A game written in, and only in, the D3D10 API will NOT run on your video card. However, as you can guess, D3D9 will still be supported for a very long time, but D3D10 usage is a totally boolean relationship: you either run the game with every feature that D3D10 allows, or you don't run it at all. There is no middle ground.

it will run Vista, but you won't be able to use the best UI it has to offer, which requires your card to be DX10 compliant to use
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As one of the other posters said, no. Aero Glass is basically D3D9 and requires only a D3D9 video card. If your computer can't handle Aero Glass, it'll default to an XP-ish 2D UI.
 
say if i get a 7900gt now, will i be able to upgrade to a dx10 card without changing the mobo ect?
 
Cypher19 said:
D3D10 adds a lot more than just geometry shaders that will improve performance in some things.
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Quote:

"Direct3D10 adds a new geometry shader stage into the graphics pipeline in between the vertex-shader and pixel-shader stages. The traditional vertex shader takes in a single vertex, a single point, and it has to output a single vertex. It's impossible for the vertex shader to create or destroy triangles because it always has to output a vertex for each one it takes in. The geometry shader lets the game operate on entire geometry primitives, lines, triangles, and points as well as neighboring adjacent primitives. The geometry shader can also create new primitives, add new triangles, before sending them further down the pipe to the rasterizer and pixel shader."



I am seeing most performance gain being the driver model from what the MS engineer is saying here:


"DirectX 10 will increase game performance by as much as six to eight times. Much of that will be accomplished with smarter resource management, improving API and driver efficiencies, and moving more work from the CPU to the GPU. "The entire API and pipeline have been redesigned from the ground-up to maximize performance, and minimize CPU and bandwidth overhead," according to Microsoft. Furthermore, "The idea behind D3D10 is to maximize what the GPU can do without CPU interaction, and when the CPU is needed it’s a fast, streamlined, pipeline-able operation." Giving the GPU more efficient ways to write and access data will reduce CPU overhead costs by keeping more of the work on the video card."


Cypher19 said:
It'll be far more drastic. A game written in, and only in, the D3D10 API will NOT run on your video card. However, as you can guess, D3D9 will still be supported for a very long time, but D3D10 usage is a totally boolean relationship: you either run the game with every feature that D3D10 allows, or you don't run it at all. There is no middle ground.
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...and again, it looks like you did not read what the MS engineer said:

Quote:

"We're going to see games developed for DX9 but written with the understanding that DX10 is coming. The transition isn't going to be too difficult, according to Epic's Tim Sweeney: "DirectX 10 is a nice incremental step up from DirectX 9, so games currently in development on Windows XP/DirectX 9 will be able to move to DirectX 10 with minimal hassle." Smartly architected DX9 games can be rewritten to incorporate DX10 fairly easily, but we can expect many of those initial ports to use the faster DX10 API to only improve performance because artists and programmers will need extra time to design and implement completely new DX10-powered effects."




MY TAKE: It's going to be over a year and a half before games specifically coded for DX10 are even going to be designed, and half of the gamers will not have Vista by that point (most gamers pick an OS and never waver until the very last ounce of usefullness is sucked out of it), and the hardware will simply be newer, just like the X1900 is newer than the X800 or like the 7900 to the 6800. I would expect better performance from that factor as well.
 
BBA said:
Quote:
I am seeing most performance gain being the driver model from what the MS engineer is saying here:


"DirectX 10 will increase game performance by as much as six to eight times. Much of that will be accomplished with smarter resource management, improving API and driver efficiencies, and moving more work from the CPU to the GPU. "The entire API and pipeline have been redesigned from the ground-up to maximize performance, and minimize CPU and bandwidth overhead," according to Microsoft. Furthermore, "The idea behind D3D10 is to maximize what the GPU can do without CPU interaction, and when the CPU is needed it’s a fast, streamlined, pipeline-able operation." Giving the GPU more efficient ways to write and access data will reduce CPU overhead costs by keeping more of the work on the video card."
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There is that benefit from the '10 API and VDDM itself, which I won't deny and I was aware of long prior to this discussion, (heck, I even refer to it directly: "D3D10 adds a lot more than just geometry shaders that will improve performance in some things. A lot of overhead involved with previous APIs should be gone, as well as very few restrictions regarding how the hardware is handled. ") but the kind of stuff that the GS allows will let a lot of currently impractical effects run much faster. For example, cubemaps (including omnidirectional shadow maps) can be rendered in a single pass instead of six, and animation can be processed once per frame by utilizing stream out (e.g. in the first pass, process the animation, and just SO'ing the results, and use those results in all successive passes for when rendering multiple lights and such) as opposed to one per pass, which can get pretty heavy if you have lights and shadows going on under current scenarios (say a 5 light scene that uses omni shadow maps, you're looking at processing the animation anywhere from 11 times to 36 times). Those are the kinds of benefits that I'm talking about.

...and again, it looks like you did not read what the MS engineer said:

Quote:

"We're going to see games developed for DX9 but written with the understanding that DX10 is coming. The transition isn't going to be too difficult, according to Epic's Tim Sweeney: "DirectX 10 is a nice incremental step up from DirectX 9, so games currently in development on Windows XP/DirectX 9 will be able to move to DirectX 10 with minimal hassle." Smartly architected DX9 games can be rewritten to incorporate DX10 fairly easily, but we can expect many of those initial ports to use the faster DX10 API to only improve performance because artists and programmers will need extra time to design and implement completely new DX10-powered effects."
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And I think you did not read what I said. I said that if a game is written only in D3D10 (that is, it uses D3D10 classes, D3D10 function calls, D3D10 shaders, etc.) it will not run on existing video cards. That's VERY different from saying that D3D9 usage maps well to D3D10 usage, which the MS eng is referring to.
 
if you remember that the rtransition from dx8 to dx9 ddidnt seem that big at all. but go back and play bf 1942 and youll immediatley see what dx9 has done
 
DX10 will be as good as vaporware until there is a need for it. There is no O/S that takes advantage of it until 2007 and, sometime in 2008 there should be a mainstream of games for it available for sale.
 
As one of the other posters said, no. Aero Glass is basically D3D9 and requires only a D3D9 video card. If your computer can't handle Aero Glass, it'll default to an XP-ish 2D UI.
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must of miss-read it, i thought aero was going to require DX10 and a "modern" 256meg VC.

DX10 will be as good as vaporware until there is a need for it. There is no O/S that takes advantage of it until 2007 and, sometime in 2008 there should be a mainstream of games for it available for sale.
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well, DX10 is released with Vista, so i guess it will never be vapor ware, we will have games that will be able to take advantage of D3D10 when it is released too
 
I don't think anyone can honestly answer this question, they can quote MS hype and press releases, but the game devs will decide when DX10 is relelvant and no one really knows what that means for video card performance. Industry thinking is that a new Windows release is the "rising tide that lifts all boats" but the gradual/steady adoption of XP doesn't entirely support that rule. I think it will take several months minimum for Vista to gain wide consumer support, so even if the early adopters love it I am not worried about a Direct X 10 native card until the end of next year.

Of course nVidia or ATi could drop something amazing and change my mind, but that is my general feeling; nothing to worry about until this time next year.
 
I'm debating the whole 'upgrade now vs. upgrade at DX10/Vista'.

One thing I'm curious about is when are the DX10 cards supposed to be released? (approximately) ...will it be concurrent with Vista or will we be seeing these new DX10 cards coming out earlier?

Anyone heard any timeline info from ATI or Nvidia on this?
 
DX10 hardware is DX10 hardware, there is no variation between what could be considered DX10 and what could be psuedo DX10, such as what we have now with SM3.0 support, one has something, the other does (visa versa), how well it will support said features is still up to the people making these cards but it should support everything

their DX10 compliant GPU's are the next release, the G80/R600's are going to be the first wave of DX10 hardware we will be seeing, which i believe is just prior to vista being launched
 
Well there is always the 'Step Up' program if things go downhill. It won't be a total loss but not all video card manufacturers will support this program.
 
silentsammy said:
I'm debating the whole 'upgrade now vs. upgrade at DX10/Vista'.

One thing I'm curious about is when are the DX10 cards supposed to be released? (approximately) ...will it be concurrent with Vista or will we be seeing these new DX10 cards coming out earlier?

Anyone heard any timeline info from ATI or Nvidia on this?
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NVidia has announced that G80, which is D3D10 compliant, will be out 2nd half of this year.
 
DX9 cards will continue to live long.....after DX10 launch. It won't be obsolete right away until atleast 3-5 years after DX10 is fully/firmly established. And with that amount of time in hands, one should have plenty of time at hands to enjoy DX9! If you are doing to wait for DX10, then DX11 is going to show up a few years after DX10, then you will want to wait for DX11. And the cycle continues DX12, DX13, DX14, etc...and you will wait FOREVER! HEHhehhe...LOL....Actually ROFLMAO.
 
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