Vista DX10 and DX9c

[Kevl4R]

So I finally installed Windows Vista Home Premium Edition (32-bit) version. I've had the copy about 3 weeks and it kept calling to me.....INSTAAAAL MEEEEE.....INSTAAAAAAAAL MEEEEEEEE! Well I cracked and did it.

I have 3 hard drives within my machine. I use a 150GB WD Caviar as the boot drive, a 250GB WD Caviar as storage and a spanky new 150GB Raptor for gaming, ie...it only has games on it. With that in mind, I tried to do an upgrade from XP right to Vista. At about 90% through the process, I got some weird blue screen o'death with a NETBIOS error...WTF is that?? In any event, since the install failed, Vista actually restored XP with no issues whatsoever. So a big F for me on the initial attempt but A++ for Vista allowing my dumb ass to still have an OS.

After this, I decided, it's best to do a fresh install and wipe the boot drive. After doing this...Shazaam, the install went off without a hitch. After the initial boot, I installed the 680i motherboard drivers from nVidia, followed by the 8800GTS drivers.

The sound did not work initially, but a quick download from Realtek, fixed that problem.


At this point, I decide lets see what works from the Raptor drive. I only have two games on there now, LOTRO and Vanguard. Neither of which would work of course because there were all kinds of missing registry entries and .dll's.

After re-installing both games (which took forever to re-download all the stinking patches), both of them worked like a charm. In fact LOTRO looked a hell of alot better and ran smoother. Oh...I did have to re-install the .net 1.1 framework though to get it to run (it comes on the pre-order CD).

Now here is the million dollar question. Both of those games, wanted DirectX 9C to run. So, I re-installed it. Now here is where I am confuddled...I thought DirectX 10 came with Vista. So it must not be backwards compatible with DX9 games?? I guess when AoC comes out...or Crysis come out...I'll have to reinstall DX10??

I've confused myself. Oh and I can't seem to find any of these fancy 3d wallpapers either. :D

[PrkChpXprss]

What I'd like to know is why a DirectX 9c game looked better on Vista :confused:

I can understand why it ran better -- it could be attributable to OS optimizations, but could also be attributed to the wipe & fresh install of the OS, or even a combination of both.

[FlyinBrian]

The problem you described has confused a lot of people myself included. Basically when you do a Vista install dont forget to run the Direct x Webupdater. Most people including myself thought that Microsoft would of included the Direct x 9 libraries within DX10 for DX9 video cards, but it seems they didnt. So anyone else wondering about vista and games just remember to patch it using windows update and then run the Direct x webupdater from Microsoft.com/directx and then everything will be fine. Runing the webupdater installs the Dirextx 9 libraries you need for current games.

Just to make it clear the webupdater doesnt uninstall Direct x 10. It just copies some Dx9 libraries you need for some of todays games. I dont know about actually trying to install dirext9c runtime though. I did not use that method. That seems dangerous to me, the webupdater scans for what files are missing.

[Kevl4R]

Oooohoooo! on the webupdater.

With regard to LOTRO, I think it has something to do Hi-Res patch files for the client. Even though I had them installed under XPm I'm not 100% sure they were active. My wife who is no big gaming person took one look at it and said..."Holy cow does that game look better!"

[Scoobydo]

DX9 is still being updated with bug fixes, etc. This causes newer programs to require things like d3dx9_31.dll, etc. Vista, like any OS, has a certain version installed but requires updates as well.

DX10 is provided in the release, but likewise, has a certain version installed. It uses things like d3dx10_1.dll, etc.

When you install DX9 runtime or web update, you are probably getting updates to both DX9 and DX10... I don't think there are seperate packages for both DX's. So as long as you run the latest DirectX installer, you will get the latest files for both.

In the case DX9 needs an update, it will only change the files required for DX9 since they are named differently than the DX10 files.