Current cards do not support DX10.1 o.O

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2168429,00.asp

This is really depressing if it's true.

 

It's true. It's also not that bad- many developers have been quoted as stating that there is nothing interesting enough in DX10.1 to be worth implementing it in games. I'm not that worried, seeing as it doesn't add anything much anyway, and I'll be satisfied with 9.0c and 10 for the time being, as well as OGL.

 

It is true, but I don't see what's so depressing about it.
Every year, GPU's are launched with new features that older cards didn't support. That's been true since the first 3d accelerators were released 15 years ago or whatever it is.

So why is it suddenly such a tragic disaster that it *still* happens?
Ohnoes, we can get better GPU's than we used to. Shocking.

No, seriously, yes, Microsoft are going to keep updating DirectX. Would you rather the entire industry was put on hold for 4 years?

The difference is simply that before, they kept updating DX9, which had a gazillion optional features. Everything from the Radeon 9600 up to Geforce 7 are DX9 cards. But the actual functionality they expose is vastly different.
You'll never see Shader Model 3.0 on a Radeon 9600, for example, or any of the dozens of other features added to newer cards. That is exactly the same situation as today, next year or the year after. Every year, new cards are released. And the reason they are released is that they're better than the ones that came before.

The only change is that with DX9, Microsoft made everything optional, so DX9 could last for ages, but developers *still* had to test the individual card's capabilities, and toggle extra features on or off based on what card you had.

Now, they can simply ask "Is a DX10.1 card installed? No? Then we'll use DX10 features". It's simpler for developers. It's the exact same for the rest of us. You get new features when your card supports it, and you get backwards compatibility if it doesn't.
The point is that 10.1 is not going to replace 10 any time soon. DX10 wasn't backwards compatible, but 10.1 sure is, and future releases will be too.
So games can and will support several versions of DX, at least until everyone have 10.1 cards, which might happen 5 or 6 years from now.
The only tricky point is compatibility between DX9 and DX10. Developers have to work a lot harder to achieve that.
But 10.1, 10.2, 11 or 12 and whatever else gets released will all be backwards compatible with 10.

In fact, this is pretty much reverting to the traditional strategy. Before DX9, things worked much the same way. We had frequent releases of new DX versions, and games just supported several different ones.
It's DX9 that was unusual in that it tried to wrap several generations and last much longer than previous versions.
DX10 just behaves like DX1-8 did. Release new versions when new features become available. Make them backwards compatible so developers can easily fall back to an older version if the gpu can't handle the latest features

Please tell me what is so depressing, considering nothing has changed.

 

there's already a topic about this

 

Well, I guess depressing wasn't a great word to use. Sad would be better. There's not even a game out that's dx10 top to bottom yet. I'm just surprised at how soon it is happening.
Didn't see the other thread, delete if wanted..

 

'futureproof' lol

 

DX 10.1 features a new sound system so you'll still need a DX10.1 sound card, also features 4xAA at all time and mandatory 32 bit floating point (optional in DX10.0)

No need to stress, you'll still get all from DX10.0

In other word, it will simplify PC-X360 ports because the new sound system is the same used with the X360 and 4xAA will work the same way