A brief intro about DirectX. Directx is created by Microsoft code named Directx, a collective name for a programming interface, Direct3D, Direct Draw, DirectSound etc, and is used to handle tasks in multimedia applications. Mainly used with video games. Basically how well a video game looks. It started with Directx 1.0 in 1995 and we’re up to version 10 now.
DirectX10 has arrived with Windows Vista! (a Vista exclusive, stupid move on Microsoft’s part but I’ll talk about that later).
Although a few video cards actually support it (Nvidia 8800 series / ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT, and not many games are out that actually take advantage of it, the results are stunning!
DirecX10 is only with Vista. Problem is, Vista and DirectX9 (version 9c) gaming don’t get along with each other although Microsoft’s claim that they are backwards compatible. They are simply not. DirectX10 is built from ground up, on a totally different architecture. They started with a clean slate with means that more then half of the games and applications you used to run under XP with good old DirectX9 simply don’t work anymore with DirectX10 installed.
My old computer has XP with DirectX9, my new one has Vista with DirectX10.
So far I can’t tell the difference with directx10 because for the simple fact I don’t have any games that support DirectX10. And even if I did, I need to get the right video card in order to support it! So basically I have to spend a lot of cash to see stunning quality graphics. That’s right, even more stunning and realistic then XboX360 (once again Microsoft made the mistake here that the XboX360 cannot be upgraded to DirectX10! There were rumors that ATI was going to release a patch but that’s unfortunately untrue)
Some images so you can see the power of DirectX10.
Flight Simulator with DirectX9
Flight Simulator with DirectX10
Age of Conan with DirectX9
Age of Conan with DirectX10
Some video samples: (pardon the shitty low YouTube resolution)
Looks awesome right! The only problem is that you need Vista and a high end video card!
I don’t see why they don’t make it compatible with XP or even XboX360! It’s their own product line! They can’t even make it compatible?!
Bottom line is, if you have XP it stops at DirectX9, to take full advantage of DirectX10 and all it’s components you need Vista.
Directx10 is NOT backwards compatible as they claim at Microsoft. It’s as I like to call it ‘artificially’ backwards compatible which means it will ‘emulate’ DirectX9, but that’s not the real step back since it’s built on a totally different architecture.
It should’ve been named something completely different since it’s a different software driver. DirectX 10 has nothing to do with the previous versions of DirectX!
I tried it myself. Most of my games that had no trouble with XP, simply won’t run under Vista.
It will take years for most gamers to catch up with the latest technology to take advance of DirectX10. Especially since they excluded XP and Xbox360.
Way to go Microsoft!
Some performance (FPS) benchmarks with the game ‘Lost Planet’ DirectX9 vs Directx10
“Crysis - DirectX9 vs DirectX10 - Comparison”
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 DirectX 10  DX 9
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