ok, so win98 went from dx 4 or 5 to dx9 fine, and xp can do dx6 to dx9, but what is so special about dx10 that it can't be released on xp, other than greed by MS to boost sales on Vista? I haven't heard much about what it will have that makes it so special that XP couldn't handle it. Anyone got any good whitepapers or tech documents that say different?
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so why no DX10 on XP?
- Thread starter RogueTrip
- Start date
I am sure there will be better technical reasons but I will venture a more economical guess:
No DX10 on XP so that you are forced to purchase Vista when it comes out in order to enjoy the "benefits" of DX10. Not to mention this will help out the video card companies and so on...
Capitalism at its greediest
No DX10 on XP so that you are forced to purchase Vista when it comes out in order to enjoy the "benefits" of DX10. Not to mention this will help out the video card companies and so on...
Capitalism at its greediest
The display driver is being moved from kernel to user space.
Long story short, MS could add support for XP, but it would require them to divert resources to a product they are trying to phase out, as well as undoubtedly causing technical issues.
50% politics, 50% technical reasons if you ask me.
EDIT: Good discussion here .
Long story short, MS could add support for XP, but it would require them to divert resources to a product they are trying to phase out, as well as undoubtedly causing technical issues.
50% politics, 50% technical reasons if you ask me.
EDIT: Good discussion here .
Child of Wonder
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Rev. said:
QFT
/thread
It's a drastically different driver model, isn't it? I get the impression that it would take a very, very large amount of work on both MS' and video card manufacturers' parts to make this work.
And, hey, let's not clutter up this thread with stupid !!!!!!-ish crap like "oh they just want your money, end of story" when you clearly have no idea WTF you're talking about, mmkay?
And, hey, let's not clutter up this thread with stupid !!!!!!-ish crap like "oh they just want your money, end of story" when you clearly have no idea WTF you're talking about, mmkay?
Master [H]
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It looks like a major design change. In hardware terms, it's like moving from AGP to PCIe. I'm not saying MS doesn't have money in mind---they're a business, and I'd be worried if any business wasn't interested in making money---but saying that MS is stictly after money is at least a blunder. The link provided is a good discussion...if you're open-minded and not pre-programming a 'MS sucks' type response.
I'm not really thrilled with Vista's offerings, and won't be jumping on the bandwagon. However, at some point, they need to kill support for certain things...like Win98.
I'm not really thrilled with Vista's offerings, and won't be jumping on the bandwagon. However, at some point, they need to kill support for certain things...like Win98.
But...but...but...but....it requires zero effort on their part to just blame Microsoft for everything, instead of understanding the actual issue! It wouldn't be right if everyone debating an issue had the facts in front of them. You'd miss out on the hilarity of people putting their foot in their mouths!kumquat said:
Very true, but if they devoted resources to XP, then anytime a bug was found in Vista, they'd take heat for not devoting full resources to Vista. No matter what MS does, they will always be bitched at by half the people...as witnessed by this thread and any other thread.jimmyb said:
Well no matter what you will have alot of the general public not up-grading, till they buy an OEM computer. Those people dont care about DX10 in the first place. I dont blame MS for not making it work with XP or, anythingelse. Vista is supposed to be a whole new system and, if I was them I would make it that way myself. The onus will be on game developers. They will either make most games for XP and, offer DX10 patches or, they wont. But they will stay where the majority of users are headed and, wont hop on Vista really fast.jimmyb said:
Child of Wonder
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Every company's motives are driven solely by profit. That's the very essence of a capitalist society.
MS wouldn't release DX10 if there wasn't money to be made doing so. Making it so DX10 is too hard/cannot work on the current OS pushes people towards upgrading to the latest and greatest.
If you believe that MS was making DX10 one day and said "oh shoot... this won't work/is too hard to impliment for XP. Dang... we had hoped to make this available for even people without Vista. Guess we'll have to go break the bad news to Bill."
Companies don't do things for any reason other than money.
MS wouldn't release DX10 if there wasn't money to be made doing so. Making it so DX10 is too hard/cannot work on the current OS pushes people towards upgrading to the latest and greatest.
If you believe that MS was making DX10 one day and said "oh shoot... this won't work/is too hard to impliment for XP. Dang... we had hoped to make this available for even people without Vista. Guess we'll have to go break the bad news to Bill."
Companies don't do things for any reason other than money.
The underlying reason is certainly economical:
Microsoft is spending a large amount of money on developing vista. It epxects to sell Vista in order to recoup that investment. If MS were going to port DX10 to WinXP it would require additional investment in terms of development and testing. In the end, MS may have to do up to twice the work with less than double the profits, since current owners of WinXP would unlikely* be willing to pay for this. So, from a financial standpoint there is little reason to invest this money in updating WinXP.
* It could be that MS's market analysis is faulty and people would actually pay for a WinXP DX10 upgrade. Nonetheless, adding DX10 to WinXP and extending support would likely cost more than the increase in revenue. Considering that MS moved from two OS lines (Win2K and Win98) to a single OS line (WinXP) in order to reduce their cost, it would seem backwards for them to extend the life of WinXP.
So, while there may be a technical reason, we all know that the underlying is certainly financial in nature.
Microsoft is spending a large amount of money on developing vista. It epxects to sell Vista in order to recoup that investment. If MS were going to port DX10 to WinXP it would require additional investment in terms of development and testing. In the end, MS may have to do up to twice the work with less than double the profits, since current owners of WinXP would unlikely* be willing to pay for this. So, from a financial standpoint there is little reason to invest this money in updating WinXP.
* It could be that MS's market analysis is faulty and people would actually pay for a WinXP DX10 upgrade. Nonetheless, adding DX10 to WinXP and extending support would likely cost more than the increase in revenue. Considering that MS moved from two OS lines (Win2K and Win98) to a single OS line (WinXP) in order to reduce their cost, it would seem backwards for them to extend the life of WinXP.
So, while there may be a technical reason, we all know that the underlying is certainly financial in nature.
I don't believe that, but I do believe that the chief OS architects sat down during one of their hundreds of meetings about the makeup of Vista and said something like this:Child of Wonder said:
"So, about drivers. We're decided to movi all of the drivers out of kernel space to increase system stability, among other things. Do we want to ask Steve and the gang to devote the resources to backporting this entirely new driver model and DirectX to Windows XP? If we do, we'll also have to get nVidia and ATI to code all-new drivers for the new driver system. We may even have to release it as a huge update that introduces new functions and files into the XP kernel itself. I think it's just too much work and it's way too expensive, especially when we consider that leaving DX10 as Vista-only may help fuel Vista adoption. What do you guys think?"
Child of Wonder
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kumquat said:
And if someone in that meeting had piped up with a way to do all that work and turn an even higher profit, we would all be talking about how cool it is that there will be DX10 for XP.
SSlaytanic
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Multi Death Corporations...
Terra said:You still didn't read the link
Terra - Do you even know what moving the driver out of kernel means?!
Un, maybe not every word, but yes I did read the thread. And it boils down to, MS wants us to buy Vista and leave behind XP. Afterall, aren't they in business to sell us thier software? Calling it "economicly unfeasable" is another way of saying that it cuts too deeply into the profit that would be made.
I didn't flame anyone, including MicroSoft.
Knock yourself out "Mr. Software Genius", and show me that answer how be it over-simplistic is false.
Some of you forum PC gods take yourselves way too seriously.
What it comes down to is you want something for free?
DX10 is not backwards compatible. To make it backwards compatible makes for bloated code, bugs and instability. It's completely new from the ground up and should make for better and more stable gaming performance for games written for it. All in all it's a very good thing. You just have to pay for it.
Isn't that the way it is with any software? You want new features you buy a new version. It's true for just about every app, even OSX. If they gave you every new feature of vista in XP there would be no reason to buy vista now would there? I certainly can't blame microsoft and if I was in thier shoes i'd do the same thing.
DX10 is not backwards compatible. To make it backwards compatible makes for bloated code, bugs and instability. It's completely new from the ground up and should make for better and more stable gaming performance for games written for it. All in all it's a very good thing. You just have to pay for it.
Isn't that the way it is with any software? You want new features you buy a new version. It's true for just about every app, even OSX. If they gave you every new feature of vista in XP there would be no reason to buy vista now would there? I certainly can't blame microsoft and if I was in thier shoes i'd do the same thing.
Archer75 said:
Yes, backwards compatibility and updating previously highly profitable software is foolish. I agree. Really I think Microsoft has no reason to release the other features previously slated for Vista as updates for Vista. If you want new features you have to pay for them. If people want WinFS or indigo they should go out and buy Vista 2009. Seriously, when did everyone turn into a bunch of freeloaders.
I also think that they should impliment a subscription service for Windows updates. I mean, Microsoft still has to pay programmers to put out these security updates. It would also reduce piracy because you would have to pay a monthly fee to use Windows Update.
But, as a footnote, Vista is hardly being built "from the ground up" nor is DirectX10. It's just not feesible for a company like Microsoft to pull this off, they've never done it before nor do I expect them to do it now. It was already hard enough for smaller and nimbler Apple to pull of OSX, and that was built from FreeBSD.
Hvatum said:
First off, I didnt say anyone should get anything for free, I just gave an over-simplified reason why they cannot.
But I have to differ on the update statement. MS and many many other companies release products all the time that arent quite perfected and the updates are completely necessary, and should be free. Covering up and repairing the holes that are in the product they sold is hardly giving out anything free.
Honestly, XP has been out for ages in software years and they are over-due for the new OS.
No, what is comes down to is that a "technical" reason does not exist. Almost everything is possibly, provided that sufficient time (i.e. money) is spent on it.Archer75 said:
I understand that "backporting" DX10 to WinXP would use a lot of resources and that it does not make sense for Microsoft to do this. Even charging for a WinXP DX10 upgrade would not alleviate the problem that support costs would likely outweight the income generated. Given that Microsoft has focussed on having a single current OS to support in order to maximize their profitability, it would be taking a step backwards.
Archer75 said:
Yes that is fine. Nobody was arguing about the benefits of DX10. The OP's questions was "why will there be no DX10 on XP?" the answer is "it does not make sense financially". That is all there needs to be said.
Exactly, and when Creative tried charging for driver updates, the response was...less than favorable. However, this leads into the common sense business reason why MS is not going to devote the effort to making DX10 available fo XP.jimmyb said:
It comes down to this. They are putting full effort into Vista, and taking programmers away from Vista can only produce negative results in terms of the quality of Vista. It's not about money and profit. It's about devoting full attention and resources to an operating system that is facing more competition than ever before. It's common sense, so leave the damn M$ bashing crap for another thread where it's actually justitifed. Instead of following the sheep in blaming Microsoft all the time, try thinking on for yourself...it's kinda fun.
*the second paragraph wasn't directed at you, jimmyb.
Why is this a hard concept? People buy new versions of games with new features. If you dont want the new features then dont buy it. Quite frankly MS already gave us some freebies with XP SP2. What's interesting is you did not hear the uproar this time like we did with Netscape. Everybody realized they were complaining about getting free stuff, now they expect it.
Weather it's political, technical, or money driven it doesnt matter, your going to need to buy it if you want the features. No amount of whining on a forum is going to change that.
Arguing on the internet is like competing in the special Olympics. Even if you win you are still retarded.
Weather it's political, technical, or money driven it doesnt matter, your going to need to buy it if you want the features. No amount of whining on a forum is going to change that.
Arguing on the internet is like competing in the special Olympics. Even if you win you are still retarded.