So solly, direct x 9 or 10 with my new build? whats the benefit

You can still upgrade and run the games in dx9. If you're only getting ~30fps in xp, run it in dx9(or lower the settings).

so your saying that score isnt really good enough to get vista to run games in directx 10 because they cant handle it anyway....really i was just wondering if my system would be able to handle directx10 games well and if it was worth it.

Your system should be able to handle it, but you may have to turn down a few settings to maintain performance in the more intensive games such as Crysis.

If all you want Vista for is DX10, then your probably better off waiting the year or two until Windows 7 comes out.

While I'm sure your chomping at the bit to put that DX10 card to good use, DX10 still has a lot of problems even if Windows Vista with a year of SP1 under its belt, is relatively problem free.

DX10 suffers from that grass is greener syndrome. When you don't have it, its nice to look at over the fence and you can't help but wonder how much more beautiful your games would be if they were running in DX10. But when you do have DX10 while it's nice in some situations and dramatic in others, in most, the difference is barely noticeable and many times comes at a price. Also DX10 does not feel as if it has ever been fully supported by Developers, and in many cases feels as if it has been tacked on and poorly at that.

People are still waiting to see a true DX10 game and they will probably continue to wait for a good while, until DX10 becomes the standard, of which is not likely to happen in Vista's limited lifetime.

If you want Vista for Vista, then do it. You can do a lot worse than Vista Ultimate for an OS, but if all you want is DX10, then patience will serve you better in the long run.

The price of Vista would go a long way into a nice, new processor.

Crysis is the DX10 game. Unfortunately it was developed on an 8800 GTX with newly buggy drivers ^_^. Certain effects look better in Vista, but I'm running it in XP till I put in a Phenom and get a more powerful GPU myself. You can always dual boot. I used GRUB from SuSE Linux to tri boot, even if the suse install is just a small bare bones thing I never use   , just to make it easy to select the XP and Vista partitions. Darn I gotta get a bigger Hard Drive now, darn games taking up all the space  

Your system will be able to handle it, but it's not worth upgrading if that's all you want from vista.

Yeah, out of everything Crysis gains the most from DX10 visually, the soft lighting really shines through (no pun intended.)

Currently only about 16 titles support DX10, and most of them badly.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Assassin's Creed
BioShock
Call of Juarez
Company of Heroes
Crysis
Devil May Cry 4
Flight Simulator X
Gears of War
Hellgate: London
Lord Of The Rings Online
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
Universe at War: Earth Assault
Unreal Tournament 3
World in Conflict
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky

-Warning -

All of this is purely my opinion, agree, disagree, its still my opinion of the current state of games that support DX10.

Age of Conan is a bug ridden PoS, especially where DX10 is concerned. The game has enough problems as it is, let alone its poor DX10 support thrown on top of it.

Assassins Creed is a DX9 game, and DX10 is only used in protocols where it would speed up performance.

Bioshock gains some nice water effects, and in a game set under the sea that's a nice payoff, however because of the way lighting is used in Bioshock, the over all lighting quality is not so much better as it is different. I mean, it looks great, but not necessarily all that much better than the DX9 lighting for Bioshock.

Call of Juarez, I didn't play.

Company of Heroes: Yay rocks! Seriously... freakin rocks... Not rocks as in "Awesome" but rocks as in... smallish size stones everywhere. No thanks.

Crysis: Beautiful in DX10, out of all the games that currently support DX10 Crysis gains the most. However those comparison faces that Microsoft kept showing for its DX10 promos? Available with the DX10 on XP Hack for Crysis, showing that DX10 was less a "This cant be done for XP" and more the carrot on the stick to try and drag people away from XP. But still, the Lighting, the Particle effects, the water the smoke... my god the fire are all beautiful when rendered in actual DX10, but it all comes at a price in performance.

Devil May Cry 4 I didn't play... I just don't like the devil may cry series... it may be the emo hair that does it.

Flight Simulator X, if the cake is a lie then Flight Simulator X is large, round and covered in icing. This promo screen shot that Microsoft used to pimp DX10 looked beautiful, breathtaking, so very realistic... and they should be, being that they are painted concept art and not actual in game footage. Flight Simulator X looks nothing like that in game.

Gears of War I never played (I know, a crime right?) so I can't say anything about how it performed with DX10.

Hellgate: London had stability issues from the start and very very buggy DX10 support. Hellgate looks great in DX10 but that has less to do with DX9 being unable to keep up, and more with poor coding and design from Flagship, and Bill Roeper even came out and admitted that putting so much time and focus into the DX10 version of Hellgate was a mistake.

Lord Of The Rings Online uses the DX10 lighting and shadows to great effect, it turns LotRO from looking cartoonishly vibrant to something a little more solid and real. Too bad the community is about as exciting as watching paint dry.

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition & Universe at War: Earth Assault I didn't play so I can not say.

Unreal Tournament 3 looks beautiful in DX10, too bad no one is playing it online. There are about 3 active servers as most people are still playing UT2004 because of UT3's stability and balance issues.

World in Conflict I didn't play and lastly S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is beautiful in DX10, but if you thought Crysis was a system killer... here is the new resource hog.

So out of all of those that I have played, the only ones I have seen that gain anything significant are Crysis, LOTRO and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky.

Crysis I have played and Im over, LOTRO I have no interest in playing again so that leaves me with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky and getting a new OS for 1 game seems gratuitous, even for me.


However, your milage may vary, perhaps all of those games on that list you love and want to go back and play over and over in all there DX10 glory.

Far Cry 2, Starcraft II & Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II and all still to be released and will have DX10 support, so we shall see. It may be worth making the move for those 3 games alone, but I personally will be waiting to see how they do in stability and performance with DX10, not just the pretty lighting and nice shadows, all of which amount to jack if the game crashes every 10 mins in DX10 mode.

But we shall see, we shall see.