DirectX10 dumb questions....

Negative Decibel

Negative Decibel

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 13, 2005
Messages
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I'm a little confused about DirectX10; And I have some dumb questions...

With the G80 cards come out in a few weeks... They are DirectX10 cards, right?
From what I've been reading, DirectX10 is only coming with Vista, and is not backwards compatible....So could I use a 8800gtx with WindowsXP? I know I wouldn't be able to play any DirectX10 games on XP, but how about older games (i.e. F.E.A.R., Oblivion, HalfLife2) with a DX10 gpu?... How does backwards compatibility work? Would there be a huge kick-ass performance difference?

I know a lot of my questions will be answered in weeks to come, as hardware performance is mere speculation at this point; but I feel like an idiot for not understanding more about what's going on right now...
 
I'm sure if you used the search function you would have found answers yourself, but I'll try to clear things up for you anyway.

Yes you are right about DirectX10 being Vista only. You might hear somewhere that "DirectX9L" is "DX10 for XP" but that is not correct. There is no DirectX10 for XP.

Yes the new cards will worth with Windows XP running DirectX9. They will still improve upon performance of the current generation even when limited to DirectX9, but that performance increase may increase further when using DirectX10.

Even new games that use DirectX10 will have a DirectX9 compatible mode for quite some time, so don't think that you won't be able to play Crysis on XP. You just won't have the DX10 effects or performance.
 
Yeah, don't sweat the small stuff. Do you really think they'd alienate all there customers (Microsoft and NVIDIA/ATI).
 
It's just that there is really very little information out there... in the forums is all about..."will this be enough of a power supply to run a 8800 gtx?" , or the typical nvidia vs. ati... crap.

The more I read about the addition of the geometry shader and such improvements, ohhh... so excited!!!! I wonder if Oblivion will run 60+ fps with all of the eye candy on..... Can't wait for some [H]benchmarks.

I will be building a new gaming system in Feb. 07... with about a $2000 budget, My aging system is having a hard time playing the latest and greatest games.

Thanks guys!
 
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