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Video Cards and Direct X

Tags:
  • Graphics Cards
  • Compatibility
  • Directx
  • Graphics
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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Anonymous
a b U Graphics card
February 26, 2002 12:27:58 PM

Hi, I was wondering. It's probably a stupid newbie question. Here goes.. Do current video cards only work with current versions of direct x? What I mean is that say a Radeon 8500 for example. It is compatible with DX 8.1. What happens when DX 9 comes out? Does this expensive video card become obsolete? or do drivers make it compatible? What about Geforce cards? are they any different? How does OpenGL tie into this? This is something that I have questioned for a while. Thanks for all the replies. Larry

More about : video cards direct

February 26, 2002 3:22:43 PM

Newer version of Direct X are always backwards compatable. Most cards out there are Geforce 2 or Radeon cards, and are only DX7 enabled. THe only DX8 and beyond cards are the GF4 TI series, Radeon 8500 series, and GF3 series cards. When DX9 comes out, it will likely straighten out some thing with all of these DX8 cards, as well as posibly streamline some of the old DX8 code. DX9 will also support newer features in upcoming ATI and Nvidia chipsets.

OpenGL is a cross-platform standard for programing graphics much like Direct X is for Windows. (It's Java, only for Graphics) Some programers prefer to use OpenGL than DirectX due to the ability to easily port code to other platforms (Linux, Mac).

What might change with Direct X in version 9, is MS might streamline code so that converting games from PC to Xbox and vice versa will be much easier. This would be a great marketing move for them, as they would be able to cash in on both ends of the gaming industry with little effort on their part, as well as an easy route to go for the software vender

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February 26, 2002 9:28:46 PM

As long as the card/chipset manufacturer develops the correct drivers, most cards will be able to run games based upon future generations of Direct X, albeit quite slower that cards that natively support that generation of Direct X (simply because the older cards use software to implement the same functions). Also if you have a more recent generation of Direct X, it is backwards compatible with games that require previous versions.
This will also happen when Direct X 9 comes out - current cards will run the games, although much slower than true to be released DX9 cards, and current games will run in the computers with DX9 installed. Geforce are just like any other cards on this aspect.

Regarding OpenGL, it will probably incurr in the same kind of evolution (at least according to a recent article of Tomshardware). Likewise, if a card doesn't support a certain function in hardware, it will emulate it through software (unless it has "less than perfect", aka buggy, drivers).

Finally, yes, todays expensive hardware will become obsolete (if it isn't already ;) )

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