Re: For Windows Advocates: DX10 for Windows XP?


"Sandman" <mr@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:mr-681F1C.09330614092007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi Windows Advocates, wherever you are! :)

So, is it true that DirectX 10 is Vista-only?

Yes. MS has back-ported a whole lot of stuff to XP,
but not this.

DX10, the newest
iteration of the DirectX drivers, mainly aimed at hard core gamers, is
for a version of Windows that gamers generally doesn't use?

Microsoft figures they'll come along when the games they lust for
use DX10. By then their computers will have enough RAM to run
Vista and also play a game, or so one would think.

Remember: the real customer for something like DX10 is not the
player of a game. It's the developer.

DX10 is a clear win the game developers, since they no longer have to
deal with different featuresets in different video cards: a DX10 card
has a specific set of features MS has defined. Expect game developers
to change over to DX10 as soon as it is decently possible.

OTOH, DX10 is no better than OpenGL from a video card vendor's
point of view. Whatever their hardware doesn't do, they must implement
in software.

I suppose MS feels OpenGL is no longer a threat, if they are now willing
to throw away one of Direct3D's main advantages over OpenGL so
casually.

[snip]
The link "DirectX End-User Runtimes Web Installer" seemed like the
most likely one, I clicked it, it downloaded an installer and now I'm
good to go. Right?

Sure. That will be DirectX 9. That should be fine, for now.

I don't know. How do I see what DX version I have installed? is there
a DX10 for Windows XP? Do I have to install Windows Vista?

You can find out what DX you are using 'dxdiag', using the
Run command. There is no DX10 for XP. You do not need to install
Vista until you want to play a game that actually requires it, and
today they are quite thin on the ground.

You, like other gamers, may want to hold off on Vista until you get
new, beefier hardware. Vista has a larger memory footprint than XP,
and games are voracious consumers of memory, so moving to Vista
without adding memory will almost certainly mean a small loss of
frame rate.

.

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