Getting the most from your Alienware by understanding current Gaming Technolgies

I wanted to put a thread together that gets our newer forum members up to speed on current gaming technologies discussed here in our forums in relation to their Alienware notebook systems. Our median level of understanding in these forums tends to be quite extraordinary, yet even for these advanced users I hope there might be something useful as well.

Direct X: The history of Direct X goes back to the early nineties when we were coding gaming applications in DOS. There was really no API subset available, and coding was done direct to the hardware (even after Windows 1.0 thru 3.1). However, with no API abstraction layer, game programming was difficult because we had no idea what graphics cards, sound cards, etc might be in the users system. Later, Microsoft developed a set of standards that we (in these forums) refer to as Direct X. Direct X has been refined through revisions over time, and there are three primary versions in use today. Direct X 9, 10 and 11. It is important to note that while we (in the forums) talk about Direct X in terms of graphics, Direct X is actually a library of multimedia API's that include:

Direct 3D: used in 3D graphics. Primarily the Direct X API that we are referring to in these forums.

Direct Sound: For special affects audio, and there is a new model called "Direct 3D Sound" that allows for the 3D audio you see currently advertised.

Direct Input: For interfacing with input devices like mouse, keyboard or control pad.

Direct Play: For interfacing with the network stack, allowing the implementation of network gaming.

Enough about API's. What's the difference between these versions of Direct X?

Direct X 9 is primarily in use for Windows XP systems today. It is still a very common distribution used by game developers because a large portion of the public is still running XP.

Direct X 10 was instituted (exclusively) for Windows Vista. 'Nuff said.

Direct X 11 is what is running on Windows 7. It is a "Superset" of Direct X 10, but includes some features that we should clarify that are not found in previous versions of Direct X. In the Alienware systems, the GEForce 4xx and 5xx cards as well as the ATI 5xxx and 6xxx cards are Direct X 11 compliant. This compliancy puts the Alienware systems in the top echelon of gaming rigs.

The first Direct X 11 specific feature that we should note is called Direct Compute. This feature allows function calls to the Direct X 11 API stack to be farmed over to the video card(s) or "GPU" that you hear us referring to. For example, a sound request can be made by the GeForce 580 in your Alienware system, even though its a graphics card. This allows us to take advantage of the serious CPU power available from a video card without using any of the main system CPU's clock cycles.

The second item that you will hear us refer to is called "Tessellation." Some of you might be familiar with this term from its advanced math heritage. Essentially, Tessellation (in relations to graphics rendering) allows a model of polygons to be broken down in to many smaller pieces. This model then goes through a three stage process of Base Model, Bump Mapping and Displacement Mapping. This three stage process allows the model to become far more life like. Examples of this technology can be seen in Metro 2033, and Alien Vs Predator.

For more on Tessellation, visit the following sites:

DirectX 11 Tessellation
Nvidia GTX 480 - DirectX 11 Water Tessellation HD - YouTube

Finally, you will hear several different testing platforms used in these forums. These benchmark tools (typically provided by a developer called Futuremark) are methods of stress testing the CPU and GPU(s) in a system. At the conclusion, a final score is generated. There are several used, but I will only list three here. These benchmarks include the following:

3Dmark 06: An older benchmark used (as it suggests) back in the 2006/2007 time frame. This is an older benchmark, and is far less relevant with todays hardware. This distro focused on Direct X 9(c) for Windows XP systems, and reflected Futuremarks first ability to weigh the CPU score in to the final system score together with the GPU. (There were two prior versions that supported DX9, 3DMark 03 supported the first rendition, and 3D Mark 05 added support for DX9 ver C).

3DMark Vantage (sometimes referred to as just Vantage): This is a more relevant benchmark, but is becoming less relevant with so much focus getting put on Direct X 11 performance and functionality. Built on Direct X 10, Vantage is for Windows Vista and Windows 7 systems.

3DMark 11: This is the latest benchmark from FutureMark. Based on Direct X 11, this will test a suite of things never tested in prior distributions such as Direct Compute, Tessellation, Direct Shaders and Multithreading. For todays advanced Windows 7 Alienware systems, this should be your benchmark of choice as it will recognize all available CPU and GPU threads, and really pound the full Direct X 11 API stack.

There are many things missing here, but I thought this a good place to start. The benchmarks and owners threads here will contain hundreds of pages of additional information. In addition, don't be afraid to ask questions of the forum members here. You will find this a very welcoming community.

Thanks!

-Thrawn

 

Thank you for this background information! Rep on the way.

 

Nice post,very helpful especially for new comers as you suggested,great work Thrawn!

 

You took your time and posted something very informative, +rep brother

PC Gamer Digital (You can get it on Steam) had a two-three part special on Graphical Features Explained, it was pretty cool because it gave examples with the feature on and off on a split screen video while narrating the effects. Definitely recommend it

 

thanks for the useful info, i only have stock knowledge on some of these because i became a gamer when dx10 was born

 

Excellent post! +1 bro... good stuff.

 

Thrawn, I am moving this thread into the main forum in the Alienware Community for greater exposure, so everyone can benefit and join the discussion.

 

link has also been added to the general info sticky. Thanks for putting this together thrawn.

 

I just wanted to add one thing to this wonderful post, mainly for people who may not know what an API is.

API is an Application Programming Interface. A nice succinct definition from Wikipedia: An application programming interface (API) is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other. An API may include specifications for routines, data structures, object classes, and variables.
An API specification can take many forms, including an International Standard such as Posix or vendor documentation such as the Microsoft Windows API, or the libraries of a programming language, e.g. Standard Template Library in C++ or Java API.

Basically an API is a common/standard interface for programmers to use to access various hardware or software systems.

Great post, and great username too boot

 

As of this moment, 449 lurkers but not any questions or things to add?

 

Many smart folks on here Fox! Maybe we should use this as an opportunity to ask questions about any other things they've been running across that they wanted an answer to? Anyone have any comments to add? Benchmarks that you use that you would like to mention?

Fire away.

 

I'm speechless.. thanks for this thread!

 

Very informative and useful
Thanks!