DX 10.1 games comig soon

[duzcizgi]

Even the S3 Chrome GT supports DX10.1. There is no logical reason as to why Nvidia will not support DX10.1 other than they have to much pride to give off any sign that they are actually "following in the footsteps of ATI" for the first time in ages.

They have a good reason for not supporting. If they'll support with their current architecture, they'd have comparable performance like S3.

 

[Topcover]

I don't think that dx10.1 will be a huge issue, It will give the 48** cards more performance in some games but by the time I will start seeing most games have it and or even require the specification I think we will see the next dx10 spec. In any case nvidia will support it eventually or the next spec.

As for me I am getting a geforce 260 simply because of trade up and having to only spend 70 bucks to double the performance of my 9800gtx. I am glad to see the great performance of the 48** series though it makes the graphics war interesting again imo nvidia was on top for way to long.

Also since I have no intention on going near the crapfest which is windows vista I don't need to worry about the dx10.1 thing for a little while yet till I start playing a game that requires it (maybe dawn of war 2 ). Until then its xp and dx9 for me =)

:lol: i hate that the page #s are so small here.

I don't expect too much of Windows 7, if it still supports legacy code from way back in the days of 98, then 7 will just be another epic fail.


Either M$ scraps legacy support, (to XP SP2 at the oldest), or its time to lay the NT kernel to rest, i vote for the latter

I agree with you there it is time for Microsoft to through away the NT kernel and to do a system redesign. I would LOVE if they went to a unix or even a (Gasp) linux kernel for a future OS but I believe they have to much pride and until linux gains steam and better user friendlyness or apple officially opens up there OS to the masses instead of sitting in its own hole using Extremely overpriced hardware I don't believe they will

 

[mactronix]

Here's a question for you.
I was reading on the forum the other day that the 3xxx and 4xxx series cards are the same architecture that the X Box uses. Is this correct ?
If it is correct this mean that the X Box is DX10.1 capable ? and if it is does it use it ?
The reason i ask is that i saw some screen shots of the Gears of war 2 game comparing the last one to the new one, I couldnt help noticing a marked resembelance to the AC DX 10.1 vs 10.0 shots a while back if any can remember, Mountain in the background better colour and depth of detail.
Mactronix

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Here's a question for you.
I was reading on the forum the other day that the 3xxx and 4xxx series cards are the same architecture that the X Box uses. Is this correct ?

No.

The close thing it would be similar to is a slightly feature boosted X1900+.

It's more than the X1K but not quite the features of the HD2K.

If it is correct this mean that the X Box is DX10.1 capable ? and if it is does it use it ?

No it's not even DX10.0 capable. However it has some additional feature like tile & deferred rendering and increasing some upper limits. Some of it's capabilities are above the HD3K (probably 4K too, need to recheck), but most are below the HD2K.
Best article on it's details is by Wavey Dave, who now works fro ATi;
http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/4/2
http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/4/9

 

[mactronix]

Thanks for clearing that up APE,
I have had to bookmark the links for later but i looked up the piece that i was talking about and it was Tom's own review
Naughty Toms.
The architecture initially introduced with the Xenos, which is the same GPU used in the Xbox 360, is based on a group of SIMD arrays. The Xenos had three SIMD arrays, and the R600 and RV670 have four. The RV770 goes much further with ten.
Thanks again
Mactronix

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Well yeah that's similar, but that's the thing, it's a combination of both technologies, which is not surprising since it is still and AMD part.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Well, raytracing asside, looks like physics will be used, as well as DX10.1 in what may be the most looked to game in awhile Diablo3. So, anyone that wants DX10.1 to never show up, or think its worthless, shouldnt bother with this game, as its unimportant heheh. OK, looks like DX10.1 is here, and its here to stay. Now, lets all embrace it, and its tech

 

[mactronix]

This is an interesting development, especially the last bit.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/ati-radeon-hd4850_9.html#sect0
Mactronix

 

[The_Abyss]

It is interesting, but it does also seem to point to what DX10 and DX10.1 were always supposed to be about. Yes there were new shaders, but DX10 was supposed to be all about efficiency as well as better visuals - more for less we were promised. It now looks like it has taken DX10.1 for this to actually happen, or more likely, time to develop on DX10 as an API seeing as DX10.1 adds very little over DX10 on the creative side of things.

 

[duzcizgi]

@GreatGrapeApe
Well XBox 360 GPU is something between X1xxx and HD2600.
As MS had total control over the programming model, (can enforce it much easier than that of Windows) it's much more efficient than DX9

DX10 is in fact a real ground up redesign of DX stack. Over the time it became so clogged up that it was practically impossible to write efficient code and build efficient hardware to support it.

DX10 is in fact a DX10 Lite. A stripped down one. As none of the major graphics engine producers were ready for the launch of Vista, MS had to cripple DX10 and go on with nVidia's G80. As soon as ATi/AMD came up with HD series, they put back the shader AA into its place immediately. Because in fact DX10 WAS meant for higher efficiency. Better scaling among multiple GPUs (SLI and CFX same).

You may wonder how DX10.1 enables better scaling. Well, as AA is also part of the HLSL, the driver and back end compiler can easily evenly distribute the workload between GPUs. When you opt for HW AA, you can't do this, as there would be obvious artifacts. This is the reason why SLI can't scale well and CFX lately can scale well. As in any case AA is done in shaders, driver/compiler can easily distribute AA also between GPUs.

 

[hannibal]

Is the DX11 coming for windows 7, or is it for the next one?
Because the windows 7 is "upgraded" Vista and it allso support 32 bit... it may be possible to only have minor DX update allso... dx10.2???

Another possibility is that DX11 is actually dx10.1 with direct sound support:
https://connect.microsoft.com/XAudio2Beta/content/content.aspx?ContentID=5127&wa=wsignin1.0

https://connect.microsoft.com/XAudio2Beta

edit: hmm the XAudio2 support is in dx10.1 allready... Miserable fortune telling try 2: Include tessalation instructions to dx... Xbox allready have tessalation unit, so does ATI's 3000 and 4000 series...

 

[duzcizgi]

@jaydeejohn

In fact, "Ray Tracing on GPU" isn't rayracing. It's called "Raycasting" but referred as Ray Tracing for marketing reasons.
The difference between them is, in Raytracing, you start from the light source and see if that "Ray" is going to the camera or not.

In raycasting, you cast rays from the camera to each pixel and trace it "back" to the light source, if it would reach a light source or nowhere.

In effect, they produce more or less the same. But latter one is vastly faster, former being much more accurate (and much much less efficient, considering only 1% of the rays traced can hit the camera.)

Just to clear up some marketing stuff. Those hyper realist animations made are raytracing. With raycasting, though it's much better than Gouroud/Phong rendering (GPU in a classical way), it's still inferior in quality.

 

[duzcizgi]

@hannibal

There's no DX11 in sight yet. For a major increment in version, there should be a major shift in hardware capabilities or paradigm of programming.

 

[hannibal]

@hannibal

There's no DX11 in sight yet. For a major increment in version, there should be a major shift in hardware capabilities or paradigm of programming.

Yep, thats why dx10.2 seems more realistic for windows 7, if even that...

 

[duzcizgi]

Don't put too much attention on Windows 7. It's a refresh of Vista, like XP was a refresh of W2K.

Translates: Under the hood, everything the same; some facelift only. Like W2K was versioned Windows 5.0.xxxx and XP was versioned 5.1.xxxx, Vista is 6.0.xxxx and Windows 7 will be 6.1.xxxx

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

@GreatGrapeApe
Well XBox 360 GPU is something between X1xxx and HD2600.

Yes, I know, hence my mention of it being more than X1900 and less than HD2K (but also having additional features that neither have), and ditto about the castration of DX10, but thanks anyways. [:thegreatgrapeape:6]

 

[Just_An_Engineer]

Just to stir the pot a little bit here, the Inquirer is now reporting that the recently announced Diablo 3 from Blizzard will support DX10.1 exclusively for DX10 mode and all cards not supporting DX10.1 will run in DX9 mode.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/06/30/blizzard-snubs-nvidia-diablo

I don't quite buy the idea that the people over at the Inquirer know so much detailed info about a game that was just announced a couple of days ago and one that Blizzard thus far has been fairly tight lipped about. It would be interesting if this were true however. It certainly seems plausible given that AMD recently announced a partnership with Blizzard.

Anyone have some theories on this?

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Nice work fellas. How would raytracing and DX10.1 work in conjuctuion, since from what Ive heard, that woud be the best of both worlds? I assume itd have to be optimized from the get go, using cpu and gpu together?

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

It looks like the inq is right, Ive seen several posts from other sites on this

 

[ovaltineplease]

I love to go out on a limb; but did it ever occur to anyone that Nvidia has continued to design cards around dx10, not 10.1, because evidently most windows users are still using XP which doesn't even support dx10. This gets back to the whole "lazy programmer" issue I guess more than anything, most programmers will design for dx9 with "dx10 realized featuers" and limited "dx10 support" as opposed to designing for full dx10 - simply because its "claimed" that dx10 still isn't mainstream.

Hey, I might be wrong; but from what i've read vista has not been that big of a hit to most people - hell even Dell was offering XP with new systems in case the people wanted XP instead, because I guess Vista installed PCs were driving their sales down.

I would expect to see a "dx10.1" Nvidia card come next Q1/Q2 - by then DX10.1 should actually be very mainstream. Well, either that or Nvidia will roll over and die, lol.

"Just to stir the pot a little bit here, the Inquirer is now reporting that the recently announced Diablo 3 from Blizzard will support DX10.1 exclusively for DX10 mode and all cards not supporting DX10.1 will run in DX9 mode. "

I would expect the "dx9" mode for Diablo3 to be a dx9 with dx10 realized features. For that matter, its a bloody action RPG - this might sound crude but they are really kinda limited to what kind of graphical intensity they can push if they want to stand by their own idea of pushing system requirements to a wide-base of consumers. Even assuming that Diablo3 was DX10.1 enabled, I strongly doubt that GPUs will be the bottleneck in a game such as that - and if i'm wrong in the longrun you can call me a monkey's uncle.

 

[duzcizgi]

Well you can escape but you can't hide, guys. Vista is here and XP is going to be phased out eventually. In fact it was slated for the 2008H2 but after that UMPC frenzy, in order to stay competitive against linux, they've extended the lifecycle of XP Home a little more. (I don't exactly know how long - Sorry.) In any case, SP3 is the last SP XP will get. And XP Professional is going to be phased out very soon.

Of course you can continue using it, but without any tech support.

Bottom line: Don't get too much attached to your XP box and start investigating your options: Either Vista or any other OS.

 

[duzcizgi]

@ovaltineplease:
You can't mix DX9 and 10. They aren't compatible at all. (I mean API-wise)

 

[mactronix]

From what i hear they are allowing XP to be extended for low powered systems only.
M$ define this as a laptop with not more than 1bg Ram, 1GHZ CPU, 80GB HDD a 10.2 inch screen that isnt a touch screen.
or in other words an Eee pc or similar. I havnt heard of the desktop specs yet.
People will kick and squirm a bit but i think it has to come as has been said as long as most people are running a DX9 OS there is no need to make games that are optimised to DX10, that and it dosent make sence business wise.
Having said that while i still run XP myself i welcome the news that some of the new games coming out will support DX10.1 and that Diablo will take this further by not messing about with DX10.0/Dx10.1.
We have to have progress and as i have said before the numbers FPS wise are looking good under vista with DX10/10.1.
I think there will be a lot of system upgrades when the new intel chipset comes next year and would think the majority of those will have vista on them, home built or otherwise.
Mactronix

 

[duzcizgi]

Correct mactronix. In fact, thinking that XP is on the shelves for more than 5 years and its code base is nearly 10 years old (W2K) it was definitely necessary for MS to retire it and push for Vista.
As a programmer, I can say one thing: Until Vista, I never upgraded my Windows OS before the actual version had at least 2 SPs. But with Vista, I tried it and said: "OK, this time they did it"
There are many millions of improvements in Vista that isn't visible to end user, but meaning a lot for the programmers.

 

[mactronix]

I guess a lot will depend on what if anything of actual significance to the end user Windows 7 will bring.
From what I'm hearing its not going to be a lot, but to be honest there's not that much info out there yet. Well not that I'm looking that hard, significant things tend to get brought to our attention though.
Any way my point is that the same old pattern will probably emerge, people will adopt Vista as the more stable/known platform, leaving the early adopters to get on with wringing the bugs out of the new OS.
You have to take your hat off to these guys. Don't know if they like a challenge or are just masochistic. :lol: either way we wouldn't get half as far as we do with out them.

Mactronix