DirectX 10 / Windows Vista Aero

Hey Everyone - As some of you may know by my other posts - I am about to buy a fully loaded Dell E1705 - I am also getting a fairly good deal ($1900) after an EPP discount, 20% off + $100 off thanks to some negotiating with the Dell Rep. Here is my question / concern - In the near future, I would like to buy and run Windows Vista Premium (With the Aero features). Will the Core 2 Duo T7400 / 7900GS / 2Gig Ram etc. be able to handle this flawlessly. Also, I know Aero will run DX 10 - Obviously the 7900 does not support 10X and will be limited to 9.0C. So I am quite certain that I will be able to play the latest and greates games at the highest resolution till March (FEAR, C&C3, NFS, HL2, TW07 etc.) - But what will be the implications beyond that? When games such as Crysis come out - will I get screwed (Along with millions of other users since we don't have cards that support 10X). I plan on keeping my laptop for atleast 3 years and I know that most consumers do the same. So a year from now, will everything support DX 10 and then will I be SOL?

The other component is that I hear about is that DX10 hardware / standard will not be backwards compatible - So essentially, If I wait 6 months / Get Vista Aero / DX 10 card / 4 gigs of ram / Santa Rosa etc. - I'll be able to play Crysis but not HL2, TW2007, etc. Is my thinking correct?

I just don't understand - Won't all the game manufacturers, consumers, hardware developers be pissed at M$oft for putting in DX10? It is sorta like saying okay you have one of two choices - a)DX10-play the best stuff out now but forget about any past titles you own or b)DX9 - Play everything out now till the new DX10 comes out and then - Thanks alot - Time for a new computer.

I guess my overall question is - What is the deal with DX10 and graphic cards and games and Windows Vista Aero? What are your thoughts on this? And What about my dilema - Get the beast of a 1705 now, be future proofed till march or wait till november/march - get the new santa rosa machine with a DX 10 card - be semi future proofed for about 3 years but not have the opportunity to play any of the past titles that I have mentioned. I would love a new computer today but I don't neccesarily need it right away and if the overall payoff is greater in the future, a few months of waiting can't harm me!

As always I would greatly appreciate your feedback / corrections and recommendations. Also if someone could point me to a good DX10/games/Vista resource - I would love to read it to get a better understanding. Thanks

-vcash

P.S. I would almost just build a desktop that is upgradable in the future but my company might relocate me to either China or India for 3 months in June 2007 and I need something I can haul with me.

 

Aero only requires DX9.0c w/ Pixel Shader & Vertex Shader 2.0...X1000 series and nVidia 7 series support this. other cards might as well (not intel 900/950) but i'm not sure.

DX10 is not backwards compatible. However, Microsoft is also building DX9.0L into the OS so that DX9/8/7 games will work. DX10 games will work on a DX9 card, but certain eye candy will not be available...but it will run as long as the game vendors support DX9 & 10 simultaneously. That will be the case for several more years.

Even then actual DX10 cards won't be in notebooks for a while...they are too power hungry. Their desktop prototypes use up to 300W for mainstream parts...which is alot more than they use today. there will have to be a lot of work done to get DX10 card in a notebook.

I'd say don't wait. By the time decent DX10 notebook cards are around, you're laptop will probably be 2 or 3 years old.

 

Here's what I heard about DX10 from various hardware forums:

- DX9 cards would run Vista and its Auro interface perfectly fine, but games strictly coded for DX10 would simply not work. In order for a card to be considered DX10, it'll have to support all its features - not just a few.

- DX10 games would not be out for a rather long time. What we should rather expect are games built around DX10 extenstions/optimizations that'll otherwise work on DX9 cards. The new optimizations/extensions would obviously not work on DX9 cards, but at least the game would run. Take Crysis (supposadly a DX10 title) being demoed on a Radeon X1900 series card for example.

- DX10 cards would have no trouble running DX8/DX9 titles, but would have to do so via an emulator that siginificantly reduces performance.

I know, certain points might conflict another, but hey, until DX10 cards are out, nobody knows. Everything's pretty much speculation at the moment.

 

Thanks Night- for your quick response once again - So now that I know that DX9 will be backwards compatible - Should I wait till November till Aero Premium comes out through the manufacturers or just buy it now and a seperate license later. I already own XP Pro - but if I get this correct - XP pro will not be able to take advantage of C2D, right?

 

Thanks CY007 - Since everything is speculation at this point - When do you think DX10 cards would be out? November - When Vista goes to manufacturers?

 

If that's so, then why do I keep hearing news of the next Radeon Xpress and Intel GMA being DX10? They'd both be released by Q1 2007.

 

Hmmm - So CY007 - Would you recommend I wait until Q1 2007 or just buy the E1705 now?

 

im pretty sure you will run it, i got windows vista ultimate installed on a sony vaio with duo core & intel 950 and 1 gig of ram. everything runs smooth and i got like a 3.0 / 5.0. system performance rating too

 

and yes my intel 950 is on directx10 :-D

 

Just get the e1705 now. DX 10 cards will not start to appear in laptops until probably quarter 2 next year (thats when Intel's GMA X3000 is due to appear in mobile form). At the moment 3 games are DX10 compliant, Alan Wake, Halo 2 and Crysis, but all of which will play on DX9 hardware anyway (providing you have Vista for the first two, they are Vista exclusive titles)

If you play the waiting game you'll be waiting forever, DX10 cards will appear, then their refresh models will be 6 months away.

 

Pretty much any graphics card right now will run Aero... including the GMA950.

As far as DX10 goes... it's power hungry. And it's gonna be hard to switch to. It's not like DX9 is gonna become obsolete overnight. At least 2 years before that happens, but probably more. Take F.E.A.R. for example. It's probably one of the most demanding games out right now, and it sill offers DX8 shader option for older cards. Now, obviously the DX9->DX10 jump is bigger than the DX8->DX9 jump, but I think you get what I'm trying to say. Crysis also runs on DX9, but it doesn't feature all the eye candy you would find on the DX10 version.

Here's the thing... if you need a laptop and/or are getting a great deal, buy now. By the time DX10 takes over they'll be working on DX11 and you'll be wondering if you should wait for that. There's always something new. A 7900GS is still a beast. On the other hand, I recently spoke to someone who was thinking of upgrading their Inspiron 9300 w/ Pentium M and Go6800 to something like an M90 or XPS M1710, and to them I suggested that they just wait. That's still a pretty strong performer. So if you're in that situation, I would just suggest wait. But that's my opinion.

 

Thanks notebook_ftw - You make a logical suggestion - I have a D600 with an ATI 9000 32mb with 512mb, etc - So I am pretty much in the cave days considering I can bearly get GTA to run. I used to be into gaming and then quit for a bit but now want to get back into it. I've never been a fan of consoles and thats why would like to have something relativlely future proof. Will the 7900 GS be able to be upgraded in a year or so if need be? Or is it like my ATI 9000 which is soldered on the board and I have no hopes of ever upgrading. I guess I am a little paranoid about getting obsolete too quickly - I bought the D600 and within 2 months the XPS line came out with a dedicated 128mb gfx card. I don't want a repeat of that and really wouldnt mind waiting for a few months if I can take advantage of a mid-major tech change. Also, what is going to be the card taking place of the 7900GS - how long before that happens? I mean the 7900 did phase out the 7800.

 

I wouldn't worry about future-proofing your Inspiron. You can only future-proof in the present to a degree. By buying what you're buying you're pretty much doing all that you can already. Don't worry about new technology, because what you have configured right now is already very powerful. It will definitely carry you well for a few years.

By then, there will have been even more advances and it would probably make more sense to get a new system rather than try to piece together upgrades on an old and rather outdated platform at that time. Depending on your needs though, it may still do all you need at that point.

The Inspiron e1705's GPU is upgradable according to Dell. Problem is, any card that would offer enough of a performance upgrade in the future may not be compatible with your system. I think that any of the current GPU offerings (for the e1705) are interchangable on the system, which is what allows them to say that they are upgradable.

And regarding DX10, last I've heard they still don't have any desktop cards out yet. There may be DX10-compatible integrated graphics out already, but it will be awhile for a mobile version to come out after the desktop ones (dedicated gaming GPUs) have been released. And game makers won't cut off older DX card owners unless they want to purposefully sell less copies of their games by narrowing their target audience that much--DX9 support should be built into games for a while as mentioned before.

One quick point--you may want to drop the CPU to a T7200 and save yourself a couple hundred dollars.

 

allow me to modify that statement... decent cards won't be released for a while. sorry, but integrated cards are just plain bad for gaming...which is all DX10 is good for.

 

Er, Core 2 Duo has nothing to do with Vista *or* DirectX 10. XP can take advantage of it just as well as Vista can.
If you're talking about running in 64-bit mode, Windows x64 can do that, but there's not really much reason to do so currently.

To everyone else, it seems people are mixing three different things here.

There's the ability to run Vista. Virtually anything can run Vista. It's not much more resource-hungry than XP. And the GMA950 can do so without any problems.
Then there's the ability to run Vista with the Aero Glass interface (The fancy top-of-the-line 3d interface). This requires a lot more horsepower. Last I checked, it required hardware support for SM2.0, which GMA950 doesn't have. But I haven't followed this closely, so they might have downgraded the requirements. In any case, not all system that can run Vista will also be able to run Aero Glass.
Finally, there's the ability to run DirectX 10. No existing cards can do that. Intel's upcoming GMA3000 appears to support this, however. (As do NVidia's and ATI's upcoming cards, obviously) But nothing you buy now will be able to run DirectX 10 applications, especially not the GMA950.

(And finally, while DirectX10 requires a compatible card, which doesn't yet exist, Vista also comes with DirectX 9, allowing existing hardware to run existing games)

And as said above, the jump from DirectX 9 to 10 is huge, a lot bigger than any previous upgrade. DirectX 10 ditches backwards compatibility, so games requiring DirectX 10 are not going to show up for the next 3 years or so. It just doesn't make sense to ditch DirectX 9 support until something like 95% of your customers have DX10 capable hardware.