Re: DX10 cards are compatible with DX10.1

* yaugin:
On Aug 15, 8:48 am, Andrew <spamt...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/33868/DX10-1-DOES-Work-with-This-Ge...
--
Andrew, contact viahttp://interpleb.googlepages.com
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question.

Of course DX 10.1 will support older versions of DX. That wasn't
really the point. The point was that, if a game requires 10.1-specific
functionality, 10.0 *hardware* won't cut it.

Nope. Besides that it's *extremely* unlikely that any DX10.1 application/game will come up (basically the same as there are no DX9.0c games but only DX9.0 games), it should be clear that these changes were adressed with future hardware in mind which doesn't necessarily come out in a few weeks from now.

Besides that, ever had a look on what's new in DX10.1? Probably not.

<http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=529f03be-1339-48c4-bd5a-8506e5acf571&DisplayLang=en&displaylang=en>

--- begin quote ---
Direct3D 10.1 is an incremental, side-by-side update to Direct3D 10.0 that provides a series of new rendering features that will be available in an upcoming generation of graphics hardware.


* TextureCube Arrays which are dynamically indexable in shader code.
* An updated shader model (shader model 4.1).
* The ability to select the MSAA sample pattern for a resource from a
palette of patterns, and retrieve the corresponding sample positions.
* The ability to render to block-compressed textures.
* More flexibility with respect to copying of resources.
* Support for blending on all unorm and snorm formats.
--- end quote ---

That means for the gfx part (remember, DX is more than just gfx!)
the only really new thing is shader model 4.1. You probably notice that unlike the gfx the audio subsystem did undergo much more stringent changes.

I don't see anything in
this statement that changes the situation.

Try this:
<http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20070815123340.html>

--- begin quote ---
At SIGGRAPH 2007 conference Microsoft announced the details of the new DirectX updates version 10.1. They pointed out that to ensure full support of DirectX 10.1 you need not only to install Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista, but you may also need to replace a graphics card. Contemporary graphics accelerators from Nvidia GeForce 8800 and AMD/ATI Radeon 2900 may not support all the new features added to Direct3D 10.1.


Next-Gen web-site made certain things clear thanks to their phone interview with Microsoft's Sam Glassenberg, who said: "DirectX 10.1 fully supports DirectX 10 hardware. No hardware support is being removed. It's strictly a superset. It's basically an update to DirectX 10 that extends the hardware functionality slightly."

According to Sam Glassenberg, DirectX 10.1 will be fully compatible with all graphics cards supporting DirectX 10. He told that the current updates are very similar to those performed for DirectX 9 back in the days. All the company wants to do now is to increase the API life cycle. This statement was addressed to majority of worried gamers who got the impression that Microsoft announced GeForce 8800 and Radeon 2900 based graphics cards may become useless after the new updates have been pushed. However, Sam confirmed that existing graphics cards may still not be able to use all the new features of DirectX 10.1. At the same time he stress that applications designed specifically for DirectX 10.1 are very unlikely to appear, because overall, the updates aren’t that critical.

So, although DirectX 10.1 will support current DirectX 10 graphics hardware, today's DirectX 10 hardware will not be able to support all of the features of DirectX 10.1, which includes incremental improvements to 3D rendering quality.

However, the gamers who have already acquired contemporary DirectX 10 graphics accelerators shouldn’t be too upset. Upon developers’ request, version 10.1 sets whatever was available in the previous releases as a standard. As for the innovations, among them are 32-bit floating-point operations (instead of 16-bit ones, used today by default) and obligatory support of 4x FSAA.
----end of quote ---

BTW: Sam Glassenberg is the Leader of the DirectX development team. He probably knows best what this is all about than anyone else including the bullshitter "Inquirer".

Rather I think the person
transcribing the article fails to understand what the issue is. Read
the user comments on that page.

I think it's you who fails to understand what the issue is. The issue is that "The Inquirer" again sells nonsense and creates panic where there is no reason for it. Of course for people that know that stuff this is nothing new as there is a reason why "The Inquirer" has a reputation as bullshitter.

Fact is that the step from DX10 to DX10.1 is nothing new. It's the same as the step from DX9.0b to DX9.0c for example. DX9.0c offered shader model 3.0 as a new feature but this didn't mean all the ATI cards that didn't support SM3.0 (i.e. ATI X800) were now obsolete. DX10.1 is just an improvement of the current DX10, and they also made provisions to support a few features that upcoming gfx hardware probably will offer. As there is still development of new gfx hardware going on it does make sense to make provisions for future development. It requires a certain amount of idiocy and a definite lack of knowledge to think that only because MS announced a new DX version that has provisions for new hardware features this immediately renders all current gfx hardware obsolete.

The announcement of DX10.1 os not different from what has been done previously (DX9.0 to DX9.0a/DX9.0b/DX9.0c, DX8 to DX8.1, DX7.0 to DX7.0a etc). Still, there are enough morons that run crazy everytime when something new comes out.


Benjamin
.

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