Geforce 8800 = Best it will EVER get for DX9

Now... What I mean is... I'm sure for the next year or two there will still be several people who will be continuing to use XP therefore will not have DX10 capabilities (until further notice), and we're quite certain that most games will be offered in DX9 mode... But has DX9 pretty much peak out?

Its obvious that the 8800's rips through your current DX9 games so will this be sure for our newer games that will be available in DX9.

Also for those who are running Vista and the 8800, do you HAVE to play games in DX10 mode or do you also get a DX9 option as well. I have Vista but I do not own a DX10 card nor do I have any games that support it, so I do apologize if thats just a ridiculous question.

I'm sure develper wont risk making a Vista DX10 only game for at least another of couple of years. Unless they get Microsoft compensation, their profits will be at risk as many people will still be using XP.

I dont think DX10 is forced in Vista.

While this is true, the gap gets smaller with each new driver and hotfix. I would guess that by the time SP1 is released for Vista, the difference between the two operating systems will be negligible.

As for the original post, I think it's a safe bet that Nvidia's and ATI's new high end cards will be faster than their current offerings in DX9. Can't be sure, but I can't think of a reason why not.

As someone who runs WINE under Linux to play DX9 games, I had to head over to their site this weekend to resolve a problem I was having and while I was reading there they mentioned that in the future it may be possible to play DX10 games under Windows XP in DX10 mode using WINE... now I'm just the messenger so don't shoot me!

for those of you said xp has better gaming performance, well it is true but difference is not something should hold any gamers to switch to vista. as right now some of the new games run better on vista, but then again the difference is small either ways.