Great News/Sad News for all the PC gamers

[JANOSIK007]

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6143883/p-4.html

Direct3D10 finally completes the break from the legacy fixed-function pipeline. Developers will use the programmable pipeline to emulate the older, fixed-function steps. Additionally, Microsoft had to rethink its display driver model now that the entire desktop is going 3D. The video card isn't just for games anymore. When you have a 3D desktop and give each application its own 3D window, the display driver has to be flexible and stable enough to handle the video card's increased role in the system. Microsoft split up the display driver to increase stability, to ensure that the 3D desktop stays up in the event that a game or another application crashes due to a graphics error. This change also means that Microsoft will not release DirectX 10 for Windows XP, because many of the Direct3D10 improvements will need the new Windows Vista Display Driver Model.


If this is DirectX 9, imagine how Unreal Engine 3 games will look in DirectX 10. Opening up the video card to more applications will require Vista to give the GPU more system resources and allow applications to share the hardware. The biggest change for game developers will be virtualized memory for the GPU. The video card will now have its own space in system RAM to store information that can't fit on local video card memory. High-end video cards ship with 256MB or 512MB of memory, but games can still use the extra space in system memory to store large chunks of information, like textures.

Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney explains, "Virtual texturing eliminates the video memory bottleneck on texture size; whereas in DirectX 9 the size of textures we can use with full performance is limited by the amount of video memory, in DirectX 10 it is only limited by total system memory." Furthermore, Tim predicts that virtual memory will enable a "2X-4X increase in texture usage in games, which will be great for Unreal Engine 3 games, where textures are often authored at very high resolutions like 2048x2048, and then scaled down on lower-end systems to improve performance."

The good news is that this new technology will skyrocket PC gaming technology ahead of everythin, any system currently on the market (this includes PS3). Video cards will now be able to tap into the entire process memory for a much higher perforamnce (6-8 times higher). Things are looking great for PC.

Bad news is that the requirments of DX10 will be much more stringent which means that a new line of hardware will needed. There are currently no cards on the market that are compatible with this technology and ATI and Nvidia are still only developing them.

My advice: hold off on these new SLI technologies and news and expensive ATI and Nvidia cards. DX10 will come with Windows Vista later this year and good comaptible GPU technology will follow few months afterwards.

[The White Knight]

Why exactly does windowsvista want to make a desktop in 3D?

[shadowarmy75]

Cause it looks cool.

[jedisponge]

Ah that's bullcrap. Good thing I held off ordering new parts.

[Erik]

Why exactly does windowsvista want to make a desktop in 3D?

Because they need to sell something.
In stead of making a more stable or more efficient OS they make one that looks different and use heavy advertising campaigns to convince people they actually need a 3D desktop.

I also doubt Direct3D 10 wil be faster than DirectX.
Microsoft claims it's 10 times faster, but that's including several years of graphics development.

I also think Microsofts claims that Direct3D 10 wil be faster is purely an advertising trick.
Sure they they wil be faster than current graphics cards, by the time they are ready.
But with several years of development DirectX cards wil be much faster too.
Games wil look much better in the future, but that's because they can cram more and more transistors on the chips, not because graphics library X is "magically" 5 times faster than graphics library Y.

[JANOSIK007]

You should read the article.

You have it all confused.

It's been called DirectX 10, Windows Graphics Foundation 2.0, and most recently, Direct3D10. The naming situation will clear up as we get closer to the official Windows Vista release

There are different names: Direct 3D, DirectX, DX. And they all talk about the same technology. It's the DX10 that comes with Windows vista and makes the current performance 6 times higher. It has nothing to do with transistors :laughing: . With this new technology graphic cards will not be limited by their own memory, but can tap into the whole processor memory. This is part of what makes the performance higher.

[Perikles]

You should read the article.

You have it all confused.



There are different names: Direct 3D, DirectX, DX. And they all talk about the same technology. It's the DX10 that comes with Windows vista and makes the current performance 6 times higher. It has nothing to do with transistors :laughing: . With this new technology graphic cards will not be limited by their own memory, but can tap into the whole processor memory. This is part of what makes the performance higher.

Does that mean that your graphics card will be able to use memory from your RAM as well?
If it does the I might be able to have soldiers in the New MTWII without pointy feet!

[Erik]

You should read the article.

I just did

You have it all confused.

No, I think you have it confused.

There are different names: Direct 3D, DirectX, DX. And they all talk about the same technology. It's the DX10 that comes with Windows vista and makes the current performance 6 times higher. It has nothing to do with transistors :laughing: .

The performance is 6 times higher ACCORDING TO MICROSOFT.
But I don't trust them becuase Microsoft always makes claims they can't deliver on, it's part of their advertising strategy.

With this new technology graphic cards will not be limited by their own memory, but can tap into the whole processor memory. This is part of what makes the performance higher.

[/quote]

Memory size isn't a bottleneck in graphics cards except for budget cards.
It's very easy to increasy the memory of a graphics card but experiments have already shown that this has hardly any effect on performance.

I think what Microsoft is trying to say is:
If you have a crappy budget card with just 32MB of RAM then Direct3D 10 wil perform 6 times faster, but if you already have a 512MB beast you don't need to tap into the system RAM, so the effect is close to zero.

This is what the article says:

DirectX 10 will increase game performance by as much as six to eight times. Much of that will be accomplished with smarter resource management, improving API and driver efficiencies, and moving more work from the CPU to the GPU. "The entire API and pipeline have been redesigned from the ground-up to maximize performance, and minimize CPU and bandwidth overhead," according to Microsoft. Furthermore, "The idea behind D3D10 is to maximize what the GPU can do without CPU interaction, and when the CPU is needed it’s a fast, streamlined, pipeline-able operation." Giving the GPU more efficient ways to write and access data will reduce CPU overhead costs by keeping more of the work on the video card.

Let's see:
- Improving API and driver efficiencies:
So basically Microsoft beleives the programmers at ATi and nVidia wil do what they have been doing for years: write better drivers, but they wil be writing better drivers for DirectX/OpenGL too, so this is not an advantage for Direct3D 10 over DirectX.

-Moving more work from the CPU to the GPU:
Yes, that's always a good idea.
But moving "work" arealy means moving transistors, making graphics chips larger and more expensive.
If your CPU is the bottleneck that is, but here is an idea: buy a dual-core CPU and let the second core hande all the graphics.

Bottom line:
If you have 512MB of video RAM, a dual-core CPU, and you installed the latest/most efficient drivers from www.ati.com or www.nvidia.com then you are already operating at close to top efficiency, and you can't expect a 6 times speed improvement from Direct3D 10.

But if your graphics card has just 32MB, you use a Pentium3, and you still use drivers from 1998 then yes, Direct3D could increase performace 6 times... if you buy a new and more expensive graphics card.

[westy159]

well heres what im going to do. My current PC (P4 2.66Ghz, 1GB RAM, 128mb Geforce 6800) will last me a year defiantly and im going to stick with it and spend no more upgrading it. Im going to get a job (if i do what my brothers doing then i will make some good money and the job requires no proper skills) and save all my money so i can buy and build myself a gaming pc with all this technology and vista and coolness at the end of the year eh.

[JANOSIK007]

And yet again you remain confused:

-stop with this Direct 3D over DX, when they are the codependent. I don't know if you have problems with English, but nowhere in the article do they talk about them as separate. Let me post the quote again:

It's been called DirectX 10, Windows Graphics Foundation 2.0, and most recently, Direct3D10. The naming situation will clear up as we get closer to the official Windows Vista release

-it's not for budget cards, in fact the requirements will be more stringent to assimilate components that they may run the technology more proficiently.

"Virtual texturing eliminates the video memory bottleneck on texture size; whereas in DirectX 9 the size of textures we can use with full performance is limited by the amount of video memory, in DirectX 10 it is only limited by total system memory."

That goes for every card compatible. That is, you won't be able to run budget cards on this system, because of the requirments.

The problem is that DirectX 10 video cards don't exist yet. Nvidia has the G80 in the works and ATI is polishing up the R600, a GPU based on the Xbox 360 "Xenos" core, but cards won't appear until Windows Vista ships the second half of this year.

That pretty much means your arguments about budget cards doesn't make sense if compatible cards don't exist yet.

Bottom Line: hold off on investing so much in the new cards when they will become outperformed by the new DX 10 technology which will not be compatible with the curent GPUs.

When we asked Tim when he thought we would see the first true DX10 games, ones that will take full advantage of DX10 hardware, he could only reply with a smile and a cryptic, "When will Windows Vista ship?"

[invictus]

Wont they release drivers for the cards? If not then, what i should return my x1900xtx? -Leon

[invictus]

Im with Erik on this side, just wont make much sense making everything old to be uncompatible. I know its marketing but still. 6X increase, thats 600% faster, thats a HUGE statement, i think they are a tad bit overstating it there. Newer end cards (like my x1900) will recieve drivers im sure, so i have no worries. Other people shouldnt really worry either, atleast in my opinion. -Leon

[JANOSIK007]

It's not for marketing purposes to make things incompatible.

It has to do with a long running rants at MS for their DX backward compatibility. That is all DX until the new one comes out could emulate pretty much anything. This made the job extra hard for developers who had to work with all the GPUs to test and rework the compatibility issues. That held up advancements and overall development.

DX10 cuts off the rope and for a good reason. It will require new functions out of its GPUs and without cutting off the compatibility gap altogether, this would be impossible.

So, you will be fine with DX9 for the time being, but DX 10 will launch a new era that will shut out all current GPUs.

I advise you to do more research on your own. There is this coll video of FarCry optimalized by DX10 (look for that).

[Erik]

Also, 500% increase would mean current graphics cards run at less than 17% efficiency!
That's very hard to beleive considering what they are capable off.

That's the real reason why I am so sceptical about "magic bullets".
If it's realy that easy to improve performace by 500% surely they could "squeeze out" an extra 100-200% out the old architecture.

It's not for marketing purposes to make things incompatible.

That's not what I said.
I said the "6 times faster" claim was pure advertising.

DX10 cuts off the rope and for a good reason. It will require new functions out of its GPUs and without cutting off the compatibility gap altogether, this would be impossible.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not against "cutting off the rope", and I agree they have good reasons to have a fresh start after so many years.

But you shouldn't expect huge performance gains overnight.
For one thing new architectes take a lot of time to "mature".

I advise you to do more research on your own. There is this coll video of FarCry optimalized by DX10 (look for that).

I did my research a long time ago, and I don't just go with Microsoft press releases.

And how can they have a video of FarCry on DX10, if no DX10 hardware exists yet?
This is yet another advertising trick:
They used a render farm to "simulate" DX10...and a 1 minute video probably took several hours to render.

[JANOSIK007]

That's not what I said.
I said the "6 times faster" claim was pure advertising.

I know. invictus did.

And how can they have a video of FarCry on DX10, if no DX10 hardware exists yet?

Do I really have to be so bluntly clear? I said they were in development, not nonexistant. This means that there is already hardware out there that is not released yet as it is not completed. But there were already demonstrations made with this hardware.

[Kanaric]

Heh, i allready have a 6800 so my next upgrade would probably be a DX10 card.

edit: You can't release drivers for a card to upgrade it to DX10, its firmware that isn't upgradable. So you wont be able to use ANY of its features until you get a new card.

[Proximus]

edit: You can't release drivers for a card to upgrade it to DX10, its firmware that isn't upgradable. So you wont be able to use ANY of its features until you get a new card.

Uhh, no?
It's the hardware itself that isn't compatible with DX10. The BIOS of the card is quite easy to upgrade actually.

[Kanaric]

Uhh, no?
It's the hardware itself that isn't compatible with DX10. The BIOS of the card is quite easy to upgrade actually.

Nitpick much? This means exactly the same thing to the people it is concerned.

[Proximus]

Nitpick much? This means exactly the same thing to the people it is concerned.

Call me nitpicking if you like, but it's quite a big difference between the BIOS and the hardware IMO. :original:

And I'm a bit skeptic to this whole DX10 thing; it's pretty much marketing from MS's side as far as I'm concerned, 600% improvement? BS big-time.
And the game that will require DX10 is of course Halo II, the most over rated console game since... well Halo. :wink:

[JANOSIK007]

and that is why this is great/sad news.

my advice is to wait it out

I had my PC for around 4 years. It is about time to recycle, but to do it right now would not be a good move. I'll wait until the whole DX10 deal settles down and I know for certain what to expect.