DX10 and X1400

I have a X1400 gfx card, and i hve DX10 preinstalled on Vista Premium 32-bit... i have read that not all gfx cards are dx10 compatible so do you reckon i should go back to 9.0c? Or does Vista need DX10 to run properly?

 

I would stick with DX10. I think Vista drivers are optimised wo work with directx10. Your card wont be able to use directx10 featuers but in the directx10 software directx9 is included.

 

Shader model 3 will work for DX10. I've heard that any card with a SM3 can run DX10 games in DX10 mode as well, though I can't gauntee that'll work.

 

You may have to install the latest DX9c runtime for running some of the current games. Vista already has some DX9 functionality built in, but it is basic.

 

Vista includes BOTH an updated version of DX9 AND DX10. Your system will not actually use DX10 as the x1400 is DX9. There is NO backwards compatability in DX10. It is only EVER used by a DX10 card, (the geforce 8 series for example). Even these cards will use DX9 when running games like HL. Basically you have both but will only use DX9, but it wont hurt having DX10 sitting there.

I am not sure yet on the structure of the sound and I/O componants to each DX, they might share it.

 

This is where I'm confused. I know that Vista does not use DX10 for anything currently, but isn't the version of DX9 in Vista something like "DX9L" (a fixed version with none of the most recent 9C runtime updates)?

There have already been instances where a few DX9 games would not run under Vista without some missing 9C runtime files.




EDIT: Nevermind. Saw the other thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=122188

 

No, it is simply a version of DX9 modified to work with Vista's driver model.

I haven't heard about the problem with missing 9.0c files, but I expect it's this:
DirectX 9 itself hasn't changed for years. It's version 9.0c and that's it. And Vista's 9.0L should be 100% compatible with 9.0c.

However, every two months, Microsoft ships an updated SDK to developers. This contains, among other things, a small utility library, D3DX which supplies a ton of useful functionality that the core DirectX doesn't do (all the 3d math, and some nice wrapping of shaders to make them easier to work with, as well as code for loading meshes from certain file formats)

However, the D3DX library is *not* backwards compatible, which means that every time you install a new game, it has to have the precise version of D3DX that *they* chose to use. (it's called something like d3dx_31.dll, where 31 is the version number. If you look through your directx folders on an old XP installation, you'll see you already have a bundle of those, but are still missing some.
That's what games actually do in the installer when they offer to install DirectX. Of course you already have DirectX, but you may not have the correct version of d3dx, so always say yes when a game offers to install/update DirectX.

I don't know if there are any "real" problems with compatibility, but if there are, I'd assume Microsoft are going to fix them.

 

ok i will stick with DX10 then...

while im here, does anyboday know how to sort out this problem...I have installed the game: Freelancer on my Dell... but when changing the res ingame, it only goes up to 1024x768, yet my desktop res goes up to 1440x900, any ideas on how to solve this?

 

Just to be clear, *whether or not* DX9L is fully compatible with XP's 9.0C, you can't really do anything about it.
Vista *can not* run the regular 9.0C, which is why they made the special version.
And having DX10 installed makes no difference, since it is only even used by DX10 apps. Doesn't affect compatibility for anything else.

So "sticking with DX10" doesn't really make a difference (I don't even know if you can uninstall it?)

 

I doubt you can uninstall DX10 just like you really can't uninstall Active Desktop. As Jalf said, you can't really choose to use DX10 or DX9L. They are both present in Vista and will be used accordingly without your control. In the case of your X1400, you will only ever use DX9L since the GPU doesn't support DX10. The OS just reports DX10 because it's present.

And as a note Vista doesn't actually use DX10 at all. DX10 is only provided for future games. Aero is actually DX9 based and doesn't use DX10 so it's not like you will get better flip effects with a DX10 GPU.

 

*BUMP*

 

Have you tried the latest patch ?

 

no, but do you know where i can?

 

Ahh, this sheds much light on my initial questions reguarding DX9 updates. Thank you, Jalf!

 

Search for "Freelancer unofficial patch"

 

are you sure that that will cure resolution problems? sounds a bit weird to me

 

I think it should.Since AFAIK M$ is no longer supporting it.They should have fixed it.