Direct X 11

http://kotaku.com/5027826/game-for [...] 1-unveiled

Seems Microsoft just announced DX11 at their latest Gamesfest conference.

Quote :

Key components of DirectX 11, will include:

o Full support (including all DX11 hardware features) on Windows Vista as well as future versions of Windows
o Compatibility with DirectX 10 and 10.1 hardware, as well as support for new DirectX 11 hardware
o New compute shader technology that lays the groundwork for the GPU to be used for more than just 3D graphics, so that developers can take advantage of the graphics card as a parallel processor
o Multi-threaded resource handling that will allow games to better take advantage of multi-core machines
o Support for tessellation, which blurs the line between super high quality pre-rendered scenes and scenes rendered in real-time, allowing game developers to refine models to be smoother and more attractive when seen up close

Think this will have any impact on the current round of cards? Also seems that all Gold member features, which are part of their Games for Windows initiative are now free to use on PC...

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No. In all "technicality" its proabbyl nothing but DX10.1b. But instead of doing the whole 9.0b, 9.0c like they did before, they are just gonna rename it to make people panic and believe there hardware is now worthless.

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Reply to spathotan

would current hardware be able to use the features in dx11?

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Reply to invisik

Quote :

o Compatibility with DirectX 10 and 10.1 hardware, as well as support for new DirectX 11 hardware

Presumably yes, unless the driver is specifically handicapped to not support Directx 11 instructions...?

Reply to ovaltineplease

No, it's very unlikely current hardware can.

Current NVIDIA cards can even do 10.1 which is already out, thought current ATI cards can.

Not many developers have actually written support for 10.1 yet.

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------------------------------ If its good in theory but not in practice,
its not good theory.
Reply to zenmaster

dx 11 by early next year probably, might have to wait a few months to upgrade..dammit

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Reply to maximiza

spathotan wrote :

No. In all "technicality" its proabbyl nothing but DX10.1b. But instead of doing the whole 9.0b, 9.0c like they did before, they are just gonna rename it to make people panic and believe there hardware is now worthless.

I think DX11 will be substantially more than that, if only for the compute shaders. Tessellation is nice too, but John Carmack is working on something with id Tech 6 that has the potential to outright trump it.

Reply to homerdog

oh god now we gotta spend another 400-500 on a graphic card. no wonder many prefer consoles lol.

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Reply to invisik

maximiza wrote :

dx 11 by early next year probably, might have to wait a few months to upgrade..dammit

I would be surprised if we see DX11 hardware "early next year." It could happen though; last I heard NVIDIA was leading the charge and they obviously want to release their new cards ASAP.

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Reply to homerdog

Strange, although it didn't have any API support, since HD 2K series ATI has tesselation unit. With 800 SP units ready at hand, upgrade to DX11 is a matter of rewritten driver only, of course if they would do.
Probably some hackers will just "turn on" the feature for GPUs HD2K, HD3K and HD4K as soon as drivers for HD5K is published.

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Reply to duzcizgi

zenmaster wrote :

No, it's very unlikely current hardware can.

Current NVIDIA cards can even do 10.1 which is already out, thought current ATI cards can.

Not many developers have actually written support for 10.1 yet.

While this is an interesting point, AMD 3000 series gpus were written with dx 10.1 anti-aliasing single pass coding in mind - which was basically not adopted by anyone except for Ubisoft in 1 game, and Techland in another. AMD corrected this assumption by making the 4000 series gpus much more powerful - as we all know.

I think its quite likely that certain DX11 featuers will be realized in DX 10 - just like certain preconceived "dx 10 only features" were realized in DX 9 (ie: god rays) - but the jury is largely still out on that. But discussing DX 10.1 as the authoritative measure as to whether any card will support any features from an upcoming directx version is a little presumptious.

Anyways, I understand their is a large difference between a "true DX11API coded app" and a DX 10 app with some DX 11 realized features force-coded into it ~ I'm not wholly disagreeing with you, i'm just explaining my position and reasoning as to why I don't think dx 10.1 is totally pertinent to much of anything.. AMD obviously knew that DX 10.1 wasn't going to be easily adopted whether they liked it or not, so they built their new gpus to not be dependant on software optimization and it seriously paid off for them.

Reply to ovaltineplease

Well this is just another reason not to get an Nvidia card at the moment, if that is you dont want to be upgrading anytime soon.
Its all just support for and compatibility, meaning the features will be there with Vista should the developers choose to use them.
How many fully DX10 or 10.1 games are there now?
Its good that it seems that it will be compatible with DX10 and 10.1 which means no worries about the cards working to some degree. so we wont get DX11 cards and effects for windows 7 and the DX10/10.1 cards would be stuck with Vista only. which is good.
Also a plus for ATI is the tessellation support, as they have had a tessellation unit on the cards for a while so in theory will have a head start on how to make the drivers work for them.

Mactronix

Reply to mactronix

duzcizgi wrote :

Strange, although it didn't have any API support, since HD 2K series ATI has tesselation unit. With 800 SP units ready at hand, upgrade to DX11 is a matter of rewritten driver only, of course if they would do.
Probably some hackers will just "turn on" the feature for GPUs HD2K, HD3K and HD4K as soon as drivers for HD5K is published.

So R600/RV670/RV770 can support DX11 with a driver update? *chuckles*

Reply to homerdog

homerdog wrote :

I would be surprised if we see DX11 hardware "early next year." It could happen though; last I heard NVIDIA was leading the charge and they obviously want to release their new cards ASAP.

I thought that Nvidia was releasing a DX 10.1 compliant card next Spring?

Or did I perhaps misread something, did you have a source for that info?

Reply to ovaltineplease

In theory, it's possible to enable in old HD2K GPUs the DX10.1

I'm not sure ATi would enable it by themselves, but in theory, it's possible to enable it on driver level, as they lack all types of specialized hardware. They Since RV670, ATi GPUs have only generic SPs in them. All is enabled/disabled by driver.

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Reply to duzcizgi

duzcizgi wrote :

In theory, it's possible to enable in old HD2K GPUs the DX10.1

I'm not sure ATi would enable it by themselves, but in theory, it's possible to enable it on driver level, as they lack all types of specialized hardware. They Since RV670, ATi GPUs have only generic SPs in them. All is enabled/disabled by driver.

R600 does not support DX10.1 on a hardware level, no amount of driver hacking can change this. RV670 was more than just a die shrink.

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Reply to homerdog

Quote :

Microsoft also announced plans to introduce Games for Windows - Live marketplace this fall, which will include free and paid downloadable game content, demos, trailers and "more."

This was from the same article - looks like MS wants to have its own "Steam"

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Reply to ovaltineplease

ovaltineplease wrote :

This was from the same article - looks like MS wants to have its own "Steam"

I love Steam :love:

Reply to homerdog

yea me too, I get a lot of games off of it and I wish more developers would adopt it instead of howling about piracy

Steam seems to be very successful at its goal

Reply to ovaltineplease

@duzcizgi,
What do you mean generic SP's ?

Mactronix

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Reply to mactronix

I wanna see ray tracing

Reply to thogrom

homerdog wrote :

R600 does not support DX10.1 on a hardware level, no amount of driver hacking can change this. RV670 was more than just a die shrink.

It can, but I don't guarantee a decent performance.

Reply to duzcizgi

Considering how often I lose CDs and CD keys, I'm a big fan of Steam.

Message edited by cjl on 07-22-2008 at 10:19:57 PM

Reply to cjl

mactronix wrote :

@duzcizgi,
What do you mean generic SP's ?

Mactronix

SP = Stream Processor or SIMD processing unit. (Single Instruction Multiple Data)
Don't forget, all the HD series ATi cards are massively paralel processing GPGPUs. (They're *much* more general purpose than nVidia counterparts)

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Reply to duzcizgi

My guess would be DirectX 11 will be released along with Windows 7.

I got an idea!! How about releasing DX 11 exclusively for Windows 7? Then make DX 11 a requirement for Halo 3!!!

Kinda reminiscent of Halo 2.

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Hence, why DX 10.1 was pointless; by the time anyone starts the code with it, DX 11 will already be out. I'm glad I get a 9800 GX2; now I can wait all the way for the DX 11 cards to come out, while the rest of you need to re-upgrade your 4870X2's you just brought

Reply to gamerk316

duzcizgi wrote :

(They're *much* more general purpose than nVidia counterparts)

Source?

jaguarskx wrote :

My guess would be DirectX 11 will be released along with Windows 7.

I got an idea!! How about releasing DX 11 exclusively for Windows 7? Then make DX 11 a requirement for Halo 3!!!

Kinda reminiscent of Halo 2.

Did you read the OP?

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Reply to homerdog

did you not read anything... dx 11 is supposed to be compatible... although that may not be true... it would be a major mistake if they did it again with windows 7.... made dx 11 only usable on windows 7

Reply to thogrom

I think I'll be fine. I stuck by my x1900xt for two years, even buying it when the first DX10 cards were about to come out, and the only reason I replaced it is because it died. xD I think my new 4850'll last just about as long, if not longer, 'cause I can max more brand-new games out now than I could then.

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Reply to Plyro109

except... now games that look like crysis are starting to pop up... so it probably won't last as long

Reply to thogrom

Plyro109 wrote :

I think I'll be fine. I stuck by my x1900xt for two years, even buying it when the first DX10 cards were about to come out, and the only reason I replaced it is because it died. xD I think my new 4850'll last just about as long, if not longer, 'cause I can max more brand-new games out now than I could then.

True, it's no secret that new games aren't as demanding as they used to be. Thank the consoles for that. In fact, due to the consoles' lack of even DX10 support I question the relevancy of any API past DX9c, at least until the next Xbox emerges. Of course, DX10's Vista exclusivity didn't help anything :??:

Reply to homerdog

homerdog wrote :

Source?

Did you read the OP?

No, I decided to be lazy today.

homerdog wrote :

Source?

Read the bottom part "Open GPU Documentation"
http://developer.amd.com/documenta [...] x#open_gpu

Before CUDA, there was Folding@home
http://ati.amd.com/technology/stre [...] index.html

Take your time and read these documents. Later we can discuss.

Reply to duzcizgi

As DX 11 is improved dx10.1, so ATI has edge on it.
ATI card can support more features from dx 11 than Nvidia cards that are out at this moment. (Including tray tracing - tessalation unit)

The problem will still be that there will be very few games that will support dx11 for long time. Many people have got their dx10 upgrade guite resently, so it means narrow user support for dx11 for many years.

Message edited by hannibal on 07-23-2008 at 12:10:58 AM

Reply to hannibal

@duzcizgi
Yes i know what one is and what one does thanks all the same, I just cant see how you came up with such a statement. Im not about to wade through pages of text, if you could cut to the chase and just quickly explain what you mean i would be very greatfull.

Mactronix

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Reply to mactronix

mactronix wrote :

@duzcizgi
Yes i know what one is and what one does thanks all the same, I just cant see how you came up with such a statement. Im not about to wade through pages of text, if you could cut to the chase and just quickly explain what you mean i would be very greatfull.

Mactronix

Sorry Mactronix,
OK, here how everything has started: With the X1K series, (Especially 1800 and 1900) ATi (those days it was just ATi) started the "OpenGPU" architecture. It was done in order to strengthen their position against nVidia that time. Don't forget Folding@home project. It might look like a charity, but in fact it's a great test bed for GPGPU to use FP acceleration.

When nVidia tried universal shader approach with FX5K series, it failed for different reasons, but ATi managed to strike a balance with x1800 & x1900 GPUs.

The next step was, logically, ATi going further to push GPGPU properties.

At those times, AMD, seeing the opportunity, started to talk about "Fusion" and a little later acquired ATi. (Those days, ATi cost more than nVidia would, but ATi was more General Purpose Ready architecture.

Whatever happened, AMD/ATi couple failed with timely delivery of HD 2K series and MS decided to strip off the properties nVidia cannot support and we saw G80 series from nVidia.

To cut the long story short, AMD is still trying to make ATi GPGPU fit for the second CPU slot of an AMD board, to name it Fusion. With every iteration, it's going more and more general. You can go and check the "Open GPU Architecture" documents in AMD/ATi site.

I'm not a fanboy of AMD or ATi. I just see a weak point with nVidia's approach.
It has a much stronger position than AMD has, but as Larrabee is coming, they're on the wrong track to counter it.
nVidia is still dependent on specialized components of the GPU for performance, that's why a GX200 is more than 2 timer larger than an R770. (Don't tell me about the 55 vs 65 nm, even if they were both 55 nm, R770 would be less than a half the size of GX200.)

Reply to duzcizgi

If I was too much of off topic, please blame Jonnie Walker Green Label.

Reply to duzcizgi

Bottom line: AMD is still experimenting on fitting that GPU into an AM2+ socket!

Reply to duzcizgi

invisik wrote :

oh god now we gotta spend another 400-500 on a graphic card. no wonder many prefer consoles lol.

nobody is forcing you to buy anything, and console graphics blow chunks.

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Reply to royalcrown

Below the bottom line: AMD is still experimenting with how far they can push their overdraft limit. At this at least, they are extremely successful...

Reply to The_Abyss

royalcrown wrote :

console graphics blow chunks.

i agree. i bought a ps3 thinking the graphics would be amazing. they really aren't. Gran Turismo 5 has massiving aliasing issues, and even a game like GTA4, which has effectively last-gen graphics can't even always keep 30fps. im dissapointed with that...

Reply to Nik_I

Yup.. the fact that so many people have a chub for consoles is mind boggling. Its even worse that the industry follows console gaming even though its technologically inferior by a great deal

You can build a budget pc that is going to run games with better IQ and speed than any console

Reply to ovaltineplease

Don't you just love when console people that have never researched pc parts brag how much better console graphics are. 720P FTWx10e12!

Reply to one-shot

Salt! www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ne [...] unces-dx11

'dx10 totally compatible with dx11'? Does this mean dx10 cards can do dx11? Bit far fetched if you ask me

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Reply to blackwidow_rsa

blackwidow_rsa wrote :

Salt! www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ne [...] unces-dx11

'dx10 totally compatible with dx11'? Does this mean dx10 cards can do dx11? Bit far fetched if you ask me

It means the same as saying that dx 10.1 is compatible with dx10...
It's not whole new graphic API, it's just "improved" version of DX10.
So yeas, you will need DX11 GPU to use all features.
Why MS use this word "compatible" in this case is beyond me. It does not actually mean anything.

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Reply to hannibal

hannibal wrote :

It means the same as saying that dx 10.1 is compatible with dx10...
It's not whole new graphic API, it's just "improved" version of DX10.
So yeas, you will need DX11 GPU to use all features.
Why MS use this word "compatible" in this case is beyond me. It does not actually mean anything.

Quote :

The Vole has also graciously decided not to force users to purchase DX11-specific hardware. Satchell readily admitted that Microsoft had deliberately created a discontinuity between DX10 and DX9, but emphasized that "DX11 is totally compatible with DX10.”

So if that means nothing, than what does it mean?

Reply to ovaltineplease

Using a bit of comon sense and using some deductive reasoning i have come to the comclusion that they mean its backwardsly compatable, same as you can use a DX9 card with Vista. Just means you dont have to have a DX11 card to run on a DX11 comp. Its a useless statement really.

@ duzcizgi,

I see what you are saying now, i think your using the word generic is what threw me.
Would it be fair to say that The ATI SP's being more multi purpose would be what we are saying?

Mactronix

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Reply to mactronix

you know, for the life of me i can't remember the name of the platform that AMD have for add on chips, ws it torrenza?

also, i thought ATI's SP's were more complex than nvidia's and took more optimisation to get the best out of them ain't it?

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Reply to Strangestranger

Tesselator or Tesselation. yup ATI already have it. So, what DX11 will bring US then ?

I all honestly mates, we all want big GPU and Big graphics, but hey, is there a singles DX10.1 game around ? Really. That has been launched OFFICIALY (cut AC off this) has 10.1 ?

I guess not. And most games are still coming as DX9.

So what ? DX 11 will come out in 2009/2010? Great !!! We will see DX11 Games in 2013/14 if everything goes as planned. Of course, nothing goes as planned, only in the freaking A-Team series, and that a 80s TV show.

I call FUD, or hype, or just a pile of crap to this M$ Statements. Ive read it and i still giggle like a little girl every time i think of it. Sorry M$, you wont sell me nothing more 2-6 years before it is done.

PS: Im not a Vista Hater. I just hate all the FUD, Hype, and MS copying MAC OSX. ooops !!

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Reply to radnor

@ strangestranger,

Yes you are quite correct, thats why they are so good at being what duzcizgi is calling generic and im calling multi purpose. They are more complex than the Nvidia ones and have more options available to them which im guessing is how they are a more General Purpose Ready architecture. which is to say they lend themselves to other aplications more easily (I think ?)

Mactronix

Reply to mactronix

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