DX10 and You (work in progress)

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meatfestival

[H]ard|Gawd
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This is by no means an authoratitive or official FAQ, just the best of my knowledge. I'm sure some of you can flesh it out with more info.

- When will DX 10 be available?
It will be shipping as part of Windows Vista which is expected in early 2007.

- Will I need a DX 10 card for Vista?
No, the minimum requirement for Vista's 3D Aero Glass interface is a card capable of Shader Model 2.0. For the old style 2D interface you don't even need that.

- But I'll need a DX 10 card to play DX 10 games?
Yes, which will only be possible on Windows Vista.

- When will DX 10 cards be available?
Nvidia's G80 is rumoured to be launching in September. ATI's R600 will follow a short time later.

- How much will they cost?
Similar pricing to previous card launches is expected.

- Will DX 7/8/9 or OpenGL games run on Vista?
Yes, and without emulation, whether you have a DX 10 card or not.

- Will DX 10 cards work in Windows XP / DirectX 9?
Yes, but obviously without DX 10 features.

- Why can't they make DX 10 for Windows XP?
DX 10 has been designed from day one to work on Vista's much more efficient new driver model, which is what actually enables it to work so much better than DX 9. None of these benefits would translate to XP, if it were to be jury-rigged to work.

- How much better will DX 10 be?
It's difficult to say until the hardware is available. DX 10 contains many improvements to speed and efficiency as well as some new features like Geometry shaders. DX 9 games ported over to DX 10 should immediately see a large increase in performance. Later games may have far richer, more detailed graphics, with new features like displacement mapping. There are also numerous other changes, such as doing away with capability bits, making it far easier for programmers to optimise for DX10 cards.

- What will the CPU requirements be?
It will probably vary from game to game. Vista's minimum CPU requirements are somewhat deceptively low. A modern 64-bit CPU like an Athlon 64 or Conroe would probably be recommended for DX 10 games, dual core if possible.

- What about the PSU requirements?
Power requirements are expected to increase slightly over DX 9 cards. It's too early to say exactly.

- Will DX 10 be possible on AGP?
Extremely unlikely.

- What's all this business about unified shaders?
There's two parts to this, the API and the cards themselves. In previous versions of DirectX, the pixel and vertex instructions had a different set of instructions and capabilities. For example, early pixel shaders had nowhere near the mathematical capabilities of vertex shaders (i.e. the pixel shader instructions amounted to little more than add, subtract, and multiply values, whereas vertex shaders could do stuff like division and exponents) but vertex shaders did not have the ability to perform any texture lookups, whereas pixel shaders could. DX10 changes this scenario so that both pixel and vertex shaders have no difference in what they can do. The reason why they're called "unified" is that they have a single, unified, instruction set.

This is all quite seperate to unified architecture on graphics cards. Nvidia are continuing to use discrete pixel/vertex pipelines with the G80 part. ATI's R600 will have unified pipelines, meaning they can be dynamically allocated to either task. For example, if a scene was particularly heavy on vertex shaders but not on pixel shaders, ATI's card could balance itself accordingly. However Nvidia believes that this is an unlikely scenario in today's shader heavy games, and are continuing with a 2:1 ratio of pixel/vertex shaders.

- What games are confirmed to have DX10 support?
Crysis, Halo 2, Unreal Tournament 2007, Age of Conan, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, Hellgate London, Shadowrun

- Will games still support DX 9 cards?
Support for DX 9 won't disappear overnight, but it's all up to the developer - it just depends. Most DX 10 games over the next while are likely to be ported + enhanced from DX 9 versions. Halo 2, which is being released as a Vista exclusive will actually run on DX 9 cards too, but it's still unknown whether the DX 10 version will have any enhanced graphics.

further reading:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTA0NSwsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1982031,00.asp
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1985149,00.asp
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1986909,00.asp
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1989495,00.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX
 
How about something relating to backwards-compatibility...

Will DX10 games such as Crysis run on my DX9 card?

When will we start to see native DX10 games?

How long will it be until I won't be able to play any games on my DX9 card?

Will I need Windows Vista to play DX10 games?

:)
 
Bona Fide said:
How about something relating to backwards-compatibility...

Will DX10 games such as Crysis run on my DX9 card?

When will we start to see native DX10 games?

How long will it be until I won't be able to play any games on my DX9 card?

Will I need Windows Vista to play DX10 games?

:)
Click to expand...

the last one is pretty much answered above. The two middle ones, I have no idea really. Will add the first one
 
- Will DX10 games such as Crysis run on my DX9 card?
Most dx10 games will have backwards compatablility feature, much like half life 2's ability to roll back to dx7. Game companies are trying to make money and by making games ONLY Dx10 compatable, would limit their market.

-When will we start to see native DX10 games?
When Vista comes out.

-How long will it be until I won't be able to play any games on my DX9 card?
Thats hard to say.. But by the time that happens, I imagine that any game you could play that runs ONLY on Dx10 would drop your card to its knees anyways.

-Will I need Windows Vista to play DX10 games?
Yes. Microsoft has announced that dx10 is a Windows Vista exclusive.
 
lloose said:
- Will DX10 games such as Crysis run on my DX9 card?
Most dx10 games will have backwards compatablility feature, much like half life 2's ability to roll back to dx7. Game companies are trying to make money and by making games ONLY Dx10 compatable, would limit their market.

-When will we start to see native DX10 games?
When Vista comes out.

-How long will it be until I won't be able to play any games on my DX9 card?
Thats hard to say.. But by the time that happens, I imagine that any game you could play that runs ONLY on Dx10 would drop your card to its knees anyways.

-Will I need Windows Vista to play DX10 games?
Yes. Microsoft has announced that dx10 is a Windows Vista exclusive.
Click to expand...

Edit your first post, with this info in it meatfestival.
 
you might want to clarify that DX10 only games will not be possible on AGP cards, but it is possible to run any other DX games with them on vista.
 
byne said:
you might want to clarify that DX10 only games will not be possible on AGP cards, but it is possible to run any other DX games with them on vista.
Click to expand...

He doesn't have to because not only is that flat-out wrong, it's actually quite an absured thought...D3D10 titles can use D3D10-based AGP cards IF they existed, but given the trend towards PCIe, it's highly unlikely that a D3D10 AGP card will ever be released. Heck, are there even any AGP versions of the X1k/7k series of GPUs?

Also, in a dream world, I'd like to run a search/replace on every instance of "DX10" in this thread and replace it with "D3D10", since there is, officially, no such thing as DirectX 10. There is only Direct3D 10 and the rest of the DirectX API has been either replaced and/or deprecated and only the 3D component is getting an upgrade to version 10.
 
I was under the impression that only DX9 games or above would run in Vista, Ive seen no mention of DX8 or below being implemented, can anyone clarify?
 
kleox64 said:
I was under the impression that only DX9 games or above would run in Vista, Ive seen no mention of DX8 or below being implemented, can anyone clarify?
Click to expand...

DX7/8 legacy support is part of DX9, the same applies to DX9.L
 
meatfestival said:
I'll merge it with some of the existing questions as there is some overlapping.
Click to expand...

Sounds good, you should make a whole new thread when the sticky is perfected.
 
meatfestival said:
DX7/8 legacy support is part of DX9, the same applies to DX9.L
Click to expand...

is this confirmed, Iam not gona make assumptions until I see working.
 
Cypher19 said:
He doesn't have to because not only is that flat-out wrong, it's actually quite an absured thought...D3D10 titles can use D3D10-based AGP cards IF they existed, but given the trend towards PCIe, it's highly unlikely that a D3D10 AGP card will ever be released. Heck, are there even any AGP versions of the X1k/7k series of GPUs?
Click to expand...

AGP 7800GT = Gainward 7800GS 512 MB Bliss(20 pipe G70 core)
AGP 7900GT = Gainward 7800GS+ 512 MB Bliss(24 pipe G71 core)

Terra...
 
Thank you sooo much for the sticky. It is much appreciated. Hopefully this will clear up most of the people clicking the new thread button to create another DX10 thread. :p
 
Btw, I'd actually like to revise the first paragraph (i.e. the non-hardware half) of this answer:

- What's all this business about unified shaders?
There's two parts to this, the API and the cards themselves. In previous versions of DirectX, with fixed function architecture, pixel and vertex instructions were handled seperately. Now in DX10 everything is handled as one - pixel, vertex and now geometry - again, making programmers' lives easier and allowing them to make better game engines.
Click to expand...

...to the text below, or at least some variation of it.

- What's all this business about unified shaders?
There's two parts to this, the API and the cards themselves. In previous versions of DirectX, the pixel and vertex instructions had a different set of instructions and capabilities. For example, early pixel shaders had nowhere near the mathematical capabilities of vertex shaders (i.e. the pixel shader instructions amounted to little more than add, subtract, and multiply values, whereas vertex shaders could do stuff like division and exponents) but vertex shaders did not have the ability to perform any texture lookups, whereas pixel shaders could. DX10 changes this scenario so that both pixel and vertex shaders have no difference in what they can do. The reason why they're called "unified" is that they have a single, unified, instruction set.
Click to expand...

The reason why I wanted to change it is because the actual shader programs themselves are still treated seperately according to how they're fed into the API. For each the pixel shader, vertex shader, and geometry shader, there's a set of create functions for them, and there's a set of "set" functions for them for setting the shader and the corresponding buffers. Also, the unified shaders don't necessarily make the programmer's lives easier, but at the same time any harder either. It simply allows them more stuff to do with each stage of the shaders.
 
It's been asked that the sticky on this be removed. Please continue to keep this updated and add to it and use it as a reference as necessary. A link to it has also been added to the FAQ so people can also be pointed there.
 
Aww, it's too bad this got unstickied. It's very informative and would probably help curb the "Should I wait for DX10 to upgrade?" threads that pop up at least once a day.
 
- How much better will DX 10 be?
It's difficult to say until the hardware is available. DX 10 contains many improvements to speed and efficiency as well as some new features like Geometry shaders. DX 9 games ported over to DX 10 should immediately see a large increase in performance. Later games may have far richer, more detailed graphics, with new features like displacement mapping. There are also numerous other changes, such as doing away with capability bits, making it far easier for programmers to optimise for DX10 cards.
Click to expand...

lol
 
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