DirectX 11 Question

If I remember properly, it was said that DirectX 11 wasn't going to require an all new graphics card like it did with DirectX 10. Is this still true? Could I expect my 8800 to handle DX11?

 

I've heard many sources say that many DX11 features will work with DX10 cards, due to the programmable nature of the shaders. However, I'm sure that in order to get the full DX11 experience, you'll need a DX11 card. They are in development now, and should start coming out within the next 6-9 months.

 

I can't wait till graphics can't get any better. Maybe then games in general will get longer and have more substance again. Also means won't have to keep buying new hardware every 2 years!
Sorry its off track

 

agreed king. however i dont think games are going to get longer any time soon unless they use new redering methods during production.
also, look at how they renamed 8 series cards 9 series cards and upped the price, with only a few changes.

 

Wow that soon? That's pretty cool.

 

i have low expectations for dx11. im likely to be at least satisfied with the upgrade.

i expect lower performance and about the same level of visuals.

 

Agreed.

The 2 big features of DX11 are tessellation support and compute shaders.

Neither of which will provide a huge jump from DX10.

 

I don't want DX11 to have better graphics than what is possible with dx9, i want it to be more efficient as in better or similar framerate than dx9 at the same level of detail.

 

I'd like a combinatin of better graphics and better performance. A majority of DX10 games were stymied by the fact that the engines had to rely so heavily on code that was optimized for both renderers. With Vista having future support for DX11, along with Win7's native support, I'm hoping developers drop DX9 altogether. It has to happen sometime (You don't see many games with DX8 support these days do ya? ) DX9 didn't start showcasing what it could do until there was no longer any need to support older APIs.

I'm all for better graphics, so long as there is scalable options that I can target toward my particular system. Crysis Warhead, for example, can run on Enthusiast, 1680x1050, no AA, with a good overclock, and I can get 25-30fps on my system. My friend can get 30fps on his 2ghz 8600GT using medium settings, and he's just fine and happy with that. So naturally, my vote is to keep moving graphics forward.

 

I guess the cards should should be shown, and/or released near late Q3-Q4 09, so yea, this year. I'm also hoping for just more performance, there's already so much they can do with PS 3.0 on DX9c Look at crysis, the entire game on max settings is only DX9, so clearly DX9 supports all the big stuff, SSAO, HDR, tesselation, etc.

DX10 seems like an entire marketing ploy, I didn't see any games actually using DX10 only features, even features locked to DX10 mode in some games have already been done in DX9 in other games. Also, things like this http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/aboutgfw/Pages/directx10-a.aspx
are just misleading. (scroll down to their comparison screenshots) They compare a game that has similar graphics to a game made in 1999 and looks like DX7, to crysis, which is done in DX9. It's pathetic they use such ploys like this.

 

Not going to happen as long as more than half of all users still game on XP. Maybe if Win7 is a runaway success, we will see a DX11-only game in 2011 (end of 2010 if they rush it). DX9 has the same exact characteristics as XP in general: sure, it's old, but everyone is used to it and it works just fine so where's the incentive to upgrade?

 

I couldn't agree more.

 

So true. Crysis locked the highest settings for dx10 only but warhead allows all levels of graphics with dx 9. Shows how much of a scam it is. Dx 9 is now getting truly showcased and tested. Not before.

 

If it is that means my x3100 will support Dx11. SWEET!

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the only real (ie graphical) improvement of DX10 something with the shaders that allowed for better looking water?

I don't really expect a whole lot from DX11, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. I'm going to have to buy a new system soon anyway, and I might as well get a DX11 graphics card.

 

Direct X 10 added scheduling and memory virtualization capabilities, introduces unified vertex and pixel shaders, supports Geometry Shaders, graphics hardware can be pre-emptively multithreaded, provide paging of the graphics memory, disabled cap bits, New state object to enable (mostly) the CPU to change states efficiently, Shader model 4.0, which enhances the programmability of the graphics pipeline, Texture arrays that enable swapping of textures in GPU without CPU intervention. predictive rendering and rapid occlusion culling, Instances 2.0 support, soft particles, true depth of field, per object motion blurring, and a heck of a lot of other stuff.

We have NEVER seen what DX10 is really capable of, due to the limited customer base that had both the hardware and the software to run DX10, and we won't see the benefits until DX9 is completely dropped from the game engine. And with the overall majority of people falling in love with win7, I have high hopes that we'll start seeing what the DX10 and DX11 rendering API is capable of. A majority of DX10 features are designed to increase performance compared to DX9, and they would, were the engine designed to take advantage of them.

I think DX11 has great potential for bringing PC gaming to a new level. Just not going to happen until people stop living in the past and move forward with their OS.

 

There's very few DirectX 10 only games, and those that do exist require a powerhouse of a machine to run it, still. So I'm not sure how DirectX 11 will help matters much since DirectX 10 really has never caught on, due to it steep hardware requirements and need for Vista.

As far as gamers moving forward with their OS, easier said than done. It's Microsoft's duty to give us something compelling so we want or need to upgrade. Vista is nothing more than a stop-gap before Windows 7, kind of like Windows ME before XP. I have very high expectations for Windows 7, and from what I hear, I should like it. I downloaded the beta but just haven't had the time to install and trial it.

 

I do not agree a lot with DX11. developers just started to make DX10 games and now what. DX10 is better than dx9 but the code has to be combined so that the games will work on DX9 and DX10. if we code a game only on DX10 it will perform way much faster than DX9 and having a better visual quality. Look at RUBY trailer made from ATI. That shows somehow what DX10 i capable doing. And another thing is that consoles work with DX9 API so we will still have some problem in future for games that will be ported.

 

This.


DX10 has hardly been tested.

 

If they made their OS cheaper then people could probably afford to move into the future, maybe...
Vista was also supposed to be a huge step into the future at launch but hardly was so. I agree vista is a lot more stable but hardly a revalutionary step like they promoted it. Despite having DX10 which I thought was going to be an absolutely epic advantage, turns out that even though DX10 is capable of making things prettier, it was hardly worth the upgrade.
For reasons like that I am still hesitant to "move forward into the future".
Also, Im broke and Im cheap

 

DX10 and DX11 will NEVER catch on like DX9 did. The reason is that it's exclusive to vista. Most people like myself go with the old if it ain't broke don't fix it way of thinking. And XP is great, there's nothing I like about vista, or windows 7 over XP. The new OS's just seem like a bunch of unnecessary bloat. And since half or more gamers out there think the same thing, we won't ever see DX10 exclusives any time soon. Forcing you to upgrade your entire operating system to one that just moves everything you know and love around, and adds a bunch of bloat, and pay hundreds of dollars just for a directX update is rediculous. I know all of the tech specs, and have read all the technical documents about DX10 years ago, but it's all pointless if games are still being developed with DX9 shaders.

Price isn't a concern because even if vista was free, I wouldn't use it as my primary OS, and neither would alot of people who have already purchased vista, tried it, and hated it.

Almost exactly 2 years after the retail release of DX10 and vista, we still haven't seen ANY of the graphical, or performance improvements that were promised before it's release. And if there are games out there that see that major boost in performance, or visuals that DX9 can't produce, please link them, because I'd love to see it on my own hardware.

 

Far Cry 2 works better and faster on DX10.

DX10 on vista will so be updated with DX11 as soon as win & will cone out.

very soon we will see the DX10 and 11 what is capable of doing and hopefully we will see soon performance improvements.

Win 7 will have almost the same kernel, API and other things. It just a cope optimization and some added features.

 

I would expect there to be exactly zero chance for this. XP is stuck on DX9 and is still a huge market, anyone requiring DX11 would be blowing off one of the legs they are standing on at a time when the market is already weak from economic conditions. Either XP has to disappear from gaming, or many more years pass before DX9 will be ignorable.

What comes to mind to me are the crysis screenshots at the extreme details and high-res where the trees are clearly improved several with DX10 times compared to DX9. I'm sure there are a few other improvements elsewhere. Don't forget that the DX system is a basic API and isn't ment to have drastic improvments every generation, it just allows a few more tasks to be done in a simple, standerized way. The developers have to make use of that and re-invest the saved money.

DX10 also includes things besides 3d support including sound managment and other multimedia (video). DX10 is also outdated since SP1 since DX10.1 became the standard, though only 3 or 4 cards are being sold that support it. So more likely then not your hardware isn't actually running the current standard.

P.S. If you hate Vista/Windows 7 so much, have you really spent enough time to messure the percise performence levels as well as playing through every game you have twice to search out visual differneces? It takes massive changes in games to be noticable unless your playing them side by side, so even if they included several improvments to visuals and increased performence by several percent, you wouldn't have noticed.

 

Then lets kill XP

 

Agreed. XP is old and outdated, and users of it are holding the rest of us back.

 

Assassin's Creed has a DirectX 10 only executable, but there's really no noticeable difference. Microsoft Flight Simulator uses DirectX 10 with the patch with no discrenable difference.

I'm not being a naysayer, but show me ONE game that is clearly improved when running Dx10 compared with Dx9 so I can be amazed. So far nothing.

 

Yeah because they havn't taken the time to truly optimise for DX10 because too many of U PEOPLE are holding us back!

 

Mermegil is on the right track. In order for DX10 to be fully utilized, the engine utilizing it has to be DX10 only. DX9 never caught on until there was no support for anything but DX9.0c. Until then, games weren't that much different from a game that used DX8.

Far Cry 2 ran better in DX10 mode compared to DX9.
FSX in DX10 looks and runs better for me in DX10 mode.
The only difference I could see in Assasins Creed was better depth of field and lower CPU utilization.

All small differences, but just like and other DX, the api won't be fully utilized until support for older API's is dropped.

 

Another key argument is that for the midrange segment vista and dx10 just are not a better option. Only now are midrange cards getting half way powerful enough to give decent frame rates and performance in dx10 settings. Windows 7 might be a different matter..

 

The transition to DX10 and Vista/Win7 is inevitable... The mainstream support for XP expires in a couple of months (April 14, 2009).

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&x=10&y=8&C2=1173

Sure some die hard XP fans will hang on as long as possible, but the majority of new pc buyers will be getting Vista. It just takes time since the majority will wait 3 or more years to get a new pc.

 

I still know some Win 2000 users who will die by it. They swear its better than XP, and that XP is bloated and a resource hog... This all sounds strangely familiar...

 

XP fans. Hate them. that's it from me.

I would love to see a pure DX10 render engine. it will perform better if it will be only DX10, better visuals, and theoretically it will have better FPS compared DX9.
DX9 is an old granny.

 

I still use XP, and I won't be using Vista until I have a reason to upgrade, which probably won't be for a while.

 

MS has a technical preview of DX11 available for download here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...6A-6D37-478D-BA17-28B1CCA4865A&displaylang=en

From MS Website:

Tessellation

Direct3D 11 provides additional pipeline stages to support real-time tessellation of high order primitives. With extensively programmable capabilities, this feature allows many different methods for evaluating high-order surfaces, including subdivision surfaces using approximation techniques, Bezier patches, adaptive tessellation, and displacement mapping.

Compute Shader

The Compute Shader is an additional stage independent of the Direct3D 11 pipeline that enables general purpose computing on the GPU. In addition to all shader features provided by the unified shader core, the Compute Shader also supports scattered reads and writes to resources through Unordered Access Views, a shared memory pool within a group of executing threads, synchronization primitives, atomic operators, and many other advanced data-parallel features. A variant of the Direct3D 11 Compute Shader has been enabled in this release that can operate on Direct3D 10-class hardware. It is therefore possible to developing Compute Shaders on actual hardware, but an updated driver is required.

Multithreaded Rendering

The key API difference from Direct3D 10 in Direct3D 11 is the addition of deferred contexts, which enables scalable execution of Direct3D commands distributed over multiple cores. A Deferred Context captures and assembles actions like state changes and draw submissions that can be executed on the actual device at a later time. By utilizing Deferred Contexts on multiple threads, an application can distribute the CPU overhead needed in the Direct3D11 runtime and the driver to multiple cores, enabling better use of an end-user's machine configuration. This feature is available for use on current Direct3D 10 hardware as well as the reference rasterizer. For a demonstration of API usage, check out the MultithreadedRendering11 sample available through the Sample Browser.

Dynamic Shader Linkage

In order to address the combinatorial explosion problem seen in specializing shaders for performance, Direct3D 11 introduces a limited form of runtime shader linkage that allows for near-optimal shader specialization during execution of an application. This is achieved by specifying the implementations of specific functions in shader code when the shader is assigned to the pipeline, allowing the driver to inline native shader instructions quickly rather than forcing the driver to recompile the intermediate language into native instructions with the new configuration. Shader development is exposed through the introduction of classes and interfaces to HLSL. For a demonstration, check out the Dynamic Shader Linkage 11 sample available through the Sample Browser.

Available in this SDK through Direct3D 11 and eventually also through Direct3D 10.1, the Direct3D API can target most Direct3D 9 hardware as well as Direct3D 10, Direct3D 10.1 and Direct3D 11 hardware. This is achieved by providing the Feature Level mechanism, which groups hardware into six categories depending on functionality: 9_1, 9_2, 9_3, 10_0, 10_1 and 11_0. A card only meets a feature level if it is fully compliant to that level, and each level is a strict super-set of those below it. Functionality is minimally emulated to assure no unexpected performance cliffs are encountered.

So according to the above information, and more in the link, the DX11 API is capable of running many DX11 binaries through DX9 hardware. Still does nothing for all ya'll XP fanboys . DX11 isn't so much of a massive change from DX10, the way DX10 is from DX9. Tightening of code and introduction of a few new features across the DX9-DX11 hardware ranges.

 

Assassin's Creed used DX10 to increase performance and slightly improved shadows. Assassin's Creed ran way better in DX10 than in DX9, there was never supposed to be a visual difference other than shadows.

This I had to quote for just how true it is...

 

Ha thanks. Does Vista SP2 come with DX11?

 

Maybe. Vista SP2 is scheduled to come out before Windows 7 so it's not clear whether Microsoft will have finished working on DX11 by this time. There's no question that DX11 will be come to Vista eventually though -- if Microsoft decides to split the Windows user base into three non-trivial segments (DX9, DX10 and DX11), it is quite likely that game developers will revolt and simply choose some common API. The days of DirectX 10 are numbered.

 

Look vista and win7 will have almost the same API. the DX11 would be as an update for windows vista. There is no reason not to update vista with dx11.

Lets see what will bring us SP2 ALPHA and BETA versions.