Nvidia’s First DirectX 10 Chip to Be “Hybrid” Design.

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prozac26 said:
DX10 is coming out with Vista, and you'll need Vista to have DX10. So unless you're getting Vista, you shouldn't really give a damn about DX10.

Yeah but i also hear that a lot of games are going to be using that as well. Of course i could be wrong in which is the case most of the time but microsoft was ranting about how many new game developers were going to be using dx10 and how it was going to "revolutionize" gaming as we know it. Obviously, they have been saying this everytime a new piece of hardware comes,[/quote] out but i thought i would mention it.
 
Will DX10 effect current generation games currently using DX9?

Example being if i'm playing EQ2 on XP using DX9, and I switch to vista... Will I still be able to play EQ2 on vista with DX10? Or do we all have to wait to see if each individual game currently out now will support DX10 or not?
 
From what im hearing, dx10 will be backwards compatable..ish. "They" say lots of bugs are being worked out and its a work in progress. Of course thats probably a bluff and dx10 isnt worth a damn. and i know a thing or two about bluffing, of course im not much of a bluffer. Especially in strip poker... oh well.
 
DX10 is coming out with Vista, and you'll need Vista to have DX10. So unless you're getting Vista, you shouldn't really give a damn about DX10.
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Well, Third Law of Computer Physics says whatever Microsoft does will be shortly followed by the rest of the computer industry. OK not really.

Point is if I'm not mistaken MS officially announced final Vista will be released in September (maybe October? Where did I read that?) of this year. When that happens new games will be made to start taking advantage of DX10 whether you like it or not. They'll still work on Windows XP I'm sure, just not with all those purty graphics that DX10 will use.

I'd say wait for a DX10 video card for sure at this point. Next year it will be a huge difference in the 7800GTX vs. the newer DX10 card from nvidia. ATi x1900 will be outdated more quickley too without hardware DX10 support
 
Will DX10 effect current generation games currently using DX9?

Example being if i'm playing EQ2 on XP using DX9, and I switch to vista... Will I still be able to play EQ2 on vista with DX10? Or do we all have to wait to see if each individual game currently out now will support DX10 or not?
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DX is just a unified programming API (SP on terminology)! So, EQ2 on XP or Vista will use DX9 architecture regardless. If a game is coded for a specific DX version, it will always use that version's features no matter what. So if EQ2 supports DX9 with say shader model 3, it will use that.

The caveat is if your card doesn't support the features. Like if you have an ATI X850 card that only supports SM2. You can run a game that would utilize SM3 just fine but you won't be able to get the features that a card with SM3 would have.
 
DX is just a unified programming API (SP on terminology)! So, EQ2 on XP or Vista will use DX9 architecture regardless.
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Not necessarily. OGL will work almost as a port in compatability mode, but DX9 may be further integrated within the DX10/WGF to allow the applications to run through DX10's more integrated kernel level. Alot of it depends on how M$ makes the legacy support.

If a game is coded for a specific DX version, it will always use that version's features no matter what. So if EQ2 supports DX9 with say shader model 3, it will use that.
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Well when running a DX7 game with DX9 it utilises everything DX9 has to offer to it (remember this isn't just graphics), and if DX9 tells M$ to handle code differently because it's more efficient it will. this also causes problems sometimes when new things are added to new versions (especially in the networking side of DX it seems). So it's not set in stone exactly what will happen. And for all we know EQ2 could get a patch to open up some DX10 features the way they did in FartCry with DX9s various incarnations.

The caveat is if your card doesn't support the features. Like if you have an ATI X850 card that only supports SM2. You can run a game that would utilize SM3 just fine but you won't be able to get the features that a card with SM3 would have.
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And here's a perfect example. Is geometric instancing SM2 or SM3? Well the R9800 and X800 can do it, so how does that fit that theory, except for the fact that intermediate features can be accessed by coding specific calls for those features, regardless of what DX says, since DX itself currently contains all the subsets.
Where this gets complicated is how DX10 is imbeded so deeply into Vista it might still run DX9 in compatability mode.
 
I have no idea what you said but it kinda makes sense? :? Basically you said that I was wrong to an extent and that it depends upon the game, the card, perhaps a patch here and there and the code!? :?:
 
from what I understand 2 versions of directx will exist on vista, directx 9L and directx 10. dx10 will not contain any prior versions of dx,it will stand alone(not backwards compatible). Cards will be required to have all of the dx10 features to be classified as a dx10 card, instead of having some features here and there like todays cards have.
 
I doubt that DX10 will not contain some elements of DX9, it doesn't make sense. Remember that DX covers more than just graphics (audio, networking and even peripheral control). Now from what I've seen it will involve what gets full integration into the kernel level and what doesn't. DX9 may run outside in compatability mode, but it's unlikely to run 2 completely different versions of DX unless M$ has really entangled things.
 
Yeah, alot of it will depend on how a game is coded. You have fallbacks now for SM3 vs SM2 vs PS1.1, but this will be a little different since the fallbacks will likely involve incompatbile features very different and without easy fallbacks.

We'll see. Alot of it will also depend on how M$ expects ATi and nV to design their chips/cards and whether they themselves can eleviate some of the load by making certain changes appear seemless (like make a unified architecture appear as a standard P+V set function part). It's not necessary but it would likely make some aspect of the next gen card's backwards compatibility be easier. nV's part will need to do the reverse, and it should be interesting how they deal with that as well, because likely the transistor cost will be higher for equal functionality, but the development costs would be likely much lower than going with a fully unified design.

We'll see.
 
Yeah, I read something the other day in regards to nVidia's arguments with the unified VS separate shaders. We'll see is indeed the proper phrase!
 
The other thing to remember is that DX10 adds a new shader/pipeline, the geomtery shader. So PS + GS + VS, perhaps nv's implementation has unified the PS & VS structure and left the GS separate, or unified the VS and GS (being closer related) and left the PS on it's own.

It will be interesting to see exactly what they mean 'hybrid' and not just 'traditional', so somehow it needs to be 'more' unified than the traditional design. Alot of people were expecting the R520 to be 16+8/8 where the vertex shader could also do pixels. This would allow 24 pixel calculation and 0 vertex or 16 pixel and 8 vertex, and potential a division below that (considerng quads, 20+4 maybe).

Either way it should offer some interesting looks are VPU/GPU design, and it'll also be interesting to see what nV says about the design and why they chose that route (benefits vs limitations, etc.)
 
I'm playing COD2, Dungeoun Seige, Half Life2 and Quake4 on Vista beta. So it seems quite compatible with DX9 and OGL. Both run smooooth, in fact alarmingly smooth, out performs xp by some margin.
 
Well the concern isn't XP vs Vista so much as Imbeded DX10 access versus Compatability OGL.

Will this mean that DX will always have a performance and resource advantage because it's at the kernel level?

I think the fears of sloq GL versus XP using GL were never a huge concern, but people get the feeling that even though GL plays well it's a ways from potential performance.

And that's what I was saying, it won't be as big an issue but it will likely run slower than truely DX10 or WGF built games.
 
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