meatfestival
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2005
- Messages
- 1,767
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
- 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