Re: For Windows Advocates: DX10 for Windows XP?


"Sandman" <mr@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:mr-82FB49.20081614092007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <13ekn4gelaapbe8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Daniel Johnson" <danieljohnson@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 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.

How's that for backwards-compatible, Dan?

It's very backwards compatible; DirectX 9 is also present
in Vista, so your existing games work.

[snip]
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.

The amount of ram isn't the problem, Backards-compatibility is the
problem. Many games just doesn't work on Vista.

My experience so far is that old games do work, but
sometimes not perfectly. For instance, Half-Life runs well,
except that I can't seem to skip the intro movies on
program start.

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

Huh?

Consumers buy the game. It is the game developer who
chooses between DX9 and DX10.

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.

Expect customers to not follow?

I expect customers will follow, if the games are DX10 only.

> 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.

Of course not.

No? Why not?

> 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.

That was pretty hilarious in itself. You can't see it with some GUI
tool?

dxdiag is a GUI tool. The "run" command is the quickest way
to find it.

You can use Vista search on Vista, of course, but you will
always have DX10 installed on Vista anyway.

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.

September 25th.

What happens on the 25th?

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.

4GB should be enough.

More than enough, really.

But a 512MB system is enough for Vista if you are just
web browsing. Games are another matter. 1 GB at the least.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: For Windows Advocates: DX10 for Windows XP?
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    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: For Windows Advocates: DX10 for Windows XP?
    ... Vista and also play a game, ... Many games just doesn't work on Vista. ... All this is no longer true with DirectX 10. ... "Command Prompt" is just a text-mode version of the Desktop. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
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  • DX10 and Vista
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