First Gen DX10 GPUs a Waste of Time?

Well the latest mainstream DX10 GPUs haven't brought shocking levels of performance over their previous counterparts, but the common argument has been you get the benefit of DX10 so that's okay. Such as whether to get the 7950GTX or the 8700M GT, where the former seems to be faster while the latter is DX10 capable and the argument is that the latter is more worthwhile for the DX10 future. Interestingly that may not be the case:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3029&p=1

The latest DX10 review shows disappointing DX10 performance. Specifically, neither the HD 2600XT or the 8600GTS are remotely playable in DX10 mode. If these desktop parts can't play DX10 games and they are faster than all mobile DX10 parts, than laptops have no chance. Hopefully newer drivers will improve things, but it looks like first gen mainstream DX10 GPUs will be restricted to DX9 mode anyways so can be directly compared to DX9 GPUs with DX10 support being no more than a checkbox feature.

 

bummer. Good find though. Figners crossed on those drivers for people like me that were hoping for better dx 10 performance.

 

How much is it the drivers and how much the actual card?

 

More the drivers...

 

After several more driver revisions and more optimization of DirectX 10 coding things may change for the better. DirectX 10 wasn't just created to make things look prettier, it was also touted as a way to power DirectX 9 era visuals with less overhead. In the anandtech article, this is only demonstrated with the upper end cards in LostPlanet Direct X 10. Theoretically, efficiency added into DirectX 10 is supposed to show INCREASED performance in the jump from DirectX 9.

So, we've got slightly prettier visuals for extreme performance decreases as of now. I would've preferred better performance for identical visuals FIRST, but I can wait.

I'm not really a big fan of DX10, but do give it a bit more of a chance. It is still possible it will deliver on its optimized performance aspect with the current generation of hardware, especially as that hardware matures into DX10 games.

Also, until we have AT LEAST 10 DirectX 10 capable games comparable side by side, I still consider the technology to be a functional prototype at best.

 

DX10 is too new to definitively say anything. I doubt it is related to the cards, but rather, very young and inefficient software.

CoH in DX10 mode runs horribly even on an 8800GTX, which shouldn't be. Judging by the immense improvements seen just from new driver versions, I am willing to say that updates to DX10 and the drivers will make things more playable.

 

I cant imagine Nvidia and ATI suddenly lost the ability to make good GPU's, so my money is on the drivers as the culprit.

 

i'd put my money on the drivers as well.