DX9 Vs DX10

If you're running it on Windows Vista, graphically it should be slightly different.

well that doesn't make me want to spend £500 on a DX10 card if a DX9 one costs a quarter of the price and is only "graphically slightly different"

All I can say is, if any upcoming game has a DirectX 9 path (it probably will), then the DirectX 10 path probably won't look all that different.

If I remember correctly the biggest difference in Dx10 is the ability to "copy" like items/polys on screen with out having to rebuild them again. For instance in DX9 each unit in an RTS has to be built by the cpu/gpu, where as in DX10 the units/polys that are alike can be copied for a small fraction of the processing/memory. This should allow a huge amount of units on screen as well as particles etc.

I'll try to find where I read that.

please correct me if I am incorrect.

Doody

so it turns out they there is f*** all point in me buy a 8800GTX for £450 when I could just get a X1900XTX for £170 which will do basically the same job, even in next years games. Who cares how many frames per second it runs games at, I dont notice the difference between anything above 40.

Find me an x1900xtx for £170 then, they don't exist

First, Dx10 games ARE gonna look much better! There's no point there. The only problem is that once games without Dx9 support will ship (that's no sooner then 3-4 years fron now), current generations Dx10 card will barely be able to get good enough frame rates on them.

I might be wrong, but if history prove right, that's what my Radeon9800Pro tells me when I play Oblivion. And remember that Oblivion is one of the first games without support for Dx8 that preceded.

But in the end, even games with dual support for Dx9 and 10 will look better on Dx10 path. That's why I'll go GeF8800GTS in february unless ATI has something better for the same price.

I avoid a few thing to stay brief by the way, so no need to come here add thing saying I'm an ignorant please.

Oblivion, Crysis, UT2k7, Allen Wake.

These tittle will benifit from the horsepower, not necessarily from DX10

Nah, but the X1950XT at dabs is pretty similar (25mhz slower core, but 125mhz faster memory);

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=4BM9&Cat...

Just a little light on the memory size though.

That'd probably do until someone felt compelled to buy a next gen card.

Pauldh posted this in another thread, showing the X1950XT as being faster than the X1900XT512 in games, and IMO making it close to the XTX in performance (although not actually matched side by side) based on what I've seen in other tests.

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=2122&c...

While still not an X1900XTX, definitely a nice buy for just over 170 pounds.

I have no doubt that DX10 games will look better than DX9, but its not gonna be the big leap some people are expecting, at the end of the day only programmers should probably be getting excited about DX10, for us it just translates as better graphics because of more powerful GPU's.

Dont forget the new physics :wink: the newer DX 10 games are really going to have some kick a** physics in game not to mention better HDR and AA, dx 9 card do x4, x6, AA while DX10 GFX cards can do x16! Dont forget also about shader pipelines now, THERE ARE NO FIX PIPELINES, so right there any DX10 card BLOWS away DX9 cards and! improves performance in games because now you get full utilization of the GFX card.

How do you say 1900XTX is worth it? cheaper yes but now obsolete, i mean look a SINGLE 8800GTX can beat TWO CROSSFIRED 1950XTX's!? ONE CARD so dont tell me DX10 is worthless and DX9 is still good, card and game wise(once we see some) (i mean havent u seen the DX10 pics on SUPCOM?)many DX9 games as you know benefit greatly from DX10 GFX card and when DX10 is finally out you already have the DX10 card!

here are some screenies of DX9 v DX10(done on a 8800GTX)

Crysis DX9
http://mediaviewer.ign.com/ignMediaPage.jsp?media_id=40...

Crysis DX10
http://mediaviewer.ign.com/ignMediaPage.jsp?media_id=40...

uhm, any DX9 game that is ported to DX10 will have little to no difference. Any DX10 game ported to DX9 will look less than great at DX9. again, physics, HDR, antialiasing will all be superior, not to mention shader model 4.0

That's a bit of an assumption. A Dx10 game will probably still look great in Dx9.
AA should be no different. As for HDR, I doubt they will stop using the OpenEXR method of HDR just because they have more bits available - the performance hit will be higher with very little (if any) returns. I don't think Physics is part of the Dx10 spec, that'll be vendor specific and backwards compatible with Dx9 probably. Shader Model 4 is maybe a valid argument, but history has shown us that even Shader Model 2.0 cards can play almost every game out there with nice visuals, the only real exception being OpenEXR HDR games.

I see no killer feature in Dx10 that will make a Dx9 path look 'less than great' in comparison.

In a couple years, maybe. But for the first couple years there won't be much of a difference. Look at Dx8 vs Dx9... hell, DirectX 8 is basically obsolete, yet if you run Half Life 2 with the DirectX 8 path you can't even see a difference between the Dx9 except if you dissect screenshots. You'd never notice anything in gameplay.

[edit] Well color me wrong, I just had a gander at the Crysis Dx9 vs Dx10 screenies and there is a hell of a difference.
I can't help but think there's more going on there than simple Dx9 vs 10 though. It looks to me like they didn't bother putting in alot of shading there in the Dx9 shot. I wager the Dx9 path could look much better, perhaps they left alot of shading options out of the path because they didn't think it was fast enough? [/edit]

[edit2] apparently, that's not Dx9 vs Dx10... it's different times of day. Hence the different shading... so the Dx9 vs 10 argument is about as copmpelling as it was in my original answer.   [/edit2]

Ive been saying this for the last week. Its all hype to get people to upgrade and buy the latest junk on the market. Honestly dont expect anything ground breaking until a few years. The games will still look like games.. The only difference is that the cards are better optimized to use their processors more efficiently.

That is correct.

If your main concern is a game like Supreme Commander, this may be a very valuable feature performance wise. I have no idea how SupComm plays on a decked out DX9 system, but SupComm is trying to break new ground with scale and shear numbers.

That simple copy feature could definitely make a huge difference if you're talking 200 units on screen at once.

Purely speculation on my part, so take it for what it's worth. Personally I'm waiting to see ATI's DX10 solution then I'll choose between the two.

Even if it would turn out that new games run fine on dx9, the 8800gtx is still a lot faster than dx9 cards.

The difference in screenshots that Cleeve mentioned, may be due to the fact that they ran dx9 on a slower card, so they had to turn a few settings down.

To me the big difference will be the geometry shadeer duplication feature as already mentioned. While geometric instancing helps, something like Oblivion's grass kills it, but with a DX10 path it should give it a wicked performance boost and you could make grass size a realistic 10-20 instead of walking through fields of wheat everywhere.

Yeah, the main game Im lookin forward to next year is Supreme Commander (still play TA to this day lol!), and so its imperative that it plays well on my new machine. Im with you though, waiting for the R600, will be buying in June/July so should have hit the market and had the chance to drop in price a little by then. The only thing that really appears to excite me about DX10 is the fact that graphics cards will have more power to use.

Actually, those are both from the same set up, just different times of the day being displayed.

This is NOT a DX9 vs DX10 comparison.