What's wrong with DX10?

J

JimmiG

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Apr 3, 2008
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It seems that in every game that offers a DirectX 10 "mode", the supposedly enhanced graphics API does at least two of the following things to the game:

  • Cuts the framerate in half (or in some cases even less)
  • Adds some barely noticeable post-processing effects or slightly higher resolution shadows, more shiny surfaces or something equally useless.
  • Causes bugs, glitches etc. like corrupted textures, flickering polygons or broken FSAA/AF
  • Adds some kind of input lag making the controls feel mushy/inaccurate even though the frame rate is reasonably high

When DX10 was new, it was promoted as a more efficient API, providing spectacular visual effects in fewer rendering passes = higher performance. Instead it just seems to make no difference in the best of cases and causes tons of issues in the worst cases.

Is there any game out there where DX10 truly makes a difference visually, without killing the frame rate or messing up the game in the process?
 
Yes, FarCry 2 - http://hardocp.com/article/2008/12/01/farcry_2_dx9_vs_dx10_performance/ and - http://hardocp.com/article/2008/12/08/farcry_2_dx9_vs_dx10_image_quality/

Our testing showed tangible improvements to performance and AA image quality using DX10 vs. DX9.

Assassin's Creed showed improvements with DX10.1 - http://hardocp.com/article/2008/04/28/assassins_creed_gameplay_performance_iq/

One thing DX10 allows, that more games are using now, is multisampling AA to function while deffered lighting is employed in a game.

The original Call of Juarez had improvements with DX10 - http://hardocp.com/article/2007/08/28/call_juarez_dx10_performance_image_quality/


Overall, the benefits have been few and far between indeed. DX10 was definitely hyped up beyond belief, and it has not delivered on that hype. As developers have had the tools now, and time, to optimize it, I think DX11 will be what DX10 should have been, much like Win7 is what Vista should have been. I'm looking forward to DX11 showing us what DX10 was supposed to.
 
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cuts framerate in half? please show me a game that does that. Far Cry 2 and Assassins Creed are about the only games that are actually faster but the performance hit in other games is usually pretty small. its still pretty big in Crysis though and you will get much better performance using DX9 in it.
 
cannondale06 said:
cuts framerate in half? please show me a game that does that. Far Cry 2 and Assassins Creed are about the only games that are actually faster but the performance hit in other games is usually pretty small. its still pretty big in Crysis though and you will get much better performance using DX9 in it.
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Crysis is an anomaly IMO.
 
leSLIe said:
is Crysis Warhead included in that?
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yes. they both have about the same gap between DX9 and DX10. of course with Warhead you can run the very high(enthusiast) settings in DX9 where as with original Crysis very high was only available in DX10. and yes I know the game can be modded and tweaked.
 
cannondale06 said:
cuts framerate in half? please show me a game that does that. Far Cry 2 and Assassins Creed are about the only games that are actually faster but the performance hit in other games is usually pretty small. its still pretty big in Crysis though and you will get much better performance using DX9 in it.
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Wierd.. I never had that issue with Crysis in DX10 mode.... never even tried DX9 mode though as DX10 mode at almost highest possible settings.. even a bit of AA at 1280x1024 was running buttery smooth on my HD3870.
 
cyclone3d said:
Wierd.. I never had that issue with Crysis in DX10 mode.... never even tried DX9 mode though as DX10 mode at almost highest possible settings.. even a bit of AA at 1280x1024 was running buttery smooth on my HD3870.
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what issue? I just said the framerate is slower in DX10 and it is. just run a benchmark in DX 10 and then DX9 and you will see. its always been that way. for example in Warhead at 1024x768 and med settings my 8600gt gets 31fps in DX10 but a much better 39fps in DX9.
 
JimmiG said:
I got horrible input lag in Far Cry 2 even with the settings turned down and 60+ FPS. Googled for a fix.. Guess what it was? Run the game in DX9 mode ;)
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yeah Far Cry 2 felt much smoother in DX9 even though the framerate was slightly lower.
 
To fix the input lag in dx10, you have to cap your FPS at 40 fps or so using the gfx_maxfps command.
 
Stan said:
To fix the input lag in dx10, you have to cap your FPS at 40 fps or so using the gfx_maxfps command.
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even after trying that DX9 was still smoother to me. I fooled around with different settings and commands and finally just used DX9 and was much happier.
 
In Age of Conan DX10 is a nightmare :)

Does look pretty but the whole framerate is just so bad , then again funcom has been struggling with nearly every shader model they programmed the game for.

So in a years time when they moved on to DX11 well see some better results for shader 4 in DX10 :)
 
dnottis said:
DX 10 was a marketing ploy to get gamers to buy Vista.
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It "worked" for me, except that I got Vista for free from school :p I run DX9 anyway because my system can't handle any loss of frame rate. I'd have never installed Vista if I didn't think DX10 would improve frame rate.
 
Based on lots of research about DX10, I decided to stick with WinXP since the cost to upgrade to Vista could not be justified with the visual improvements of DX10.
 
JaguarSKX said:
Based on lots of research about DX10, I decided to stick with WinXP since the cost to upgrade to Vista could not be justified with the visual improvements of DX10.
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well, upgrading form WinXP to Vista right now doesn't look too good, upgrading to Win7 in the other hand looks very promising ;)
 
dnottis said:
DX 10 was a marketing ploy to get gamers to buy Vista.
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Exactly! I am happy to report that none of the gamers in my circle of friends fell for this foul scheme. Personally I can still not be bothered to embark on Vista (DX 10) journey. The advantages seem too few. Lets just hope DX11 turns out to be the visual/technical revolution we need, and not just a scheme.
 
DX10 wasn't ever intended to be a 'marketing scheme', and Vista was never intended to be a flop. I know a lot of people like to believe that Microsoft is an evil company... but how would releasing a bad product be beneficial to them? Monopoly or not, good products sell better than bad ones.

DX10 actually was built with some performance improvements in mind, particularly in terms of driver overhead. Examples like FC2 and AC2 do show that with proper implementation, there really are places were DX10 is faster than DX9.

(I'm paraphrasing from something I heard a while ago, so I'm not entirely confident of the following) At the same time, DX10 brought some changes that generally lead to lower performance when using "DX9-style" code, draw calls for example. DX10's instancing support means multiple objects can be drawn per call, but it adds overhead for each individual call. If the code is written with instancing in mind, the total number of draw calls can be greatly reduced and thus performance improved overall. However code that doesn't bother with instancing will run slower on DX10 than DX9.

edit: go here for an idea of what I'm trying to explain.

Don't be too quick to pat yourselves on the back for 'not falling for this foul scheme'. There's nothing foul about MS trying to advertise potential performance improvements, even if it takes a while for games to get with it. It's not like MS doesn't release their SDKs well in advance.
 
Performance of DX10 is one issue, I had also grief with the way DX10 handles screen refresh rates. I use good old 21" CRT monitor. It seems that DX9 uses your desktop's refresh rate(?), but in DX10 you need some code.
Only way that I got Crysis from eye straining 60Hz --> 100Hz, was to use utility program that stripped away all the other refresh rates-than 100Hz from windows registry. After that tuning it was hard to get Neverwinter Nights 2 to work. When I played Crysis to the end, I restored the refresh rate's from the utility program's backup.

Bioshock and Assassin's Creed worked properly with 100Hz DX10.
 
Im upgrading to windows 7 soon thanks to nvidia refusing to make XP drivers for 3D vision discover/stereoscopic
 
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