Nvidia to launch DirectX 10 chip in mid-November

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20061002A2007.html

Some pictures:

http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?p=2571798#post2571798

 

That would really bite if it is indeed not backward compatible with XP and DX9.

 

Wish we knew what systems this new Nvidea chip would be available with ...

 

the card drivers should be able to handle DX9, so don't worry it will still work with XP and DX9. given that many people probably won't upgrade to Vista for a while, NVIDIA would be shooting themselves in the foot if their latest and greatest were incapable of running on the hardware and software that most people use (aka XP & DX9).

but DX10 will never be ported to XP. it order to use all of the cards features, you will have to upgrade to Vista.

 

Of course it's backwards compatible. It would be pretty much physically impossible to make a DX10 card that can't run DX9. All it requires is that the driver feeds the card certain simple shaders that effectively disables the DX10 features.

In fact, I can already guarantee that DX15 cards will run games that use DX3.0 just fine.

The hardware is simple to make backwards compatible, since all that happens is that features get added, but support for old features isn't removed.
So it just needs a driver that tells all the new features to do nothing.

 

You're right, of course. My mistake for just quickly scanning the article. Reading again I see they were actually talking about DX10's backward compatibiltiy with previous OS.

 

It isn't sure that DX15 will run games that use DX3.0, it is possible they change the whole software completely sometime. (They did it already with DX9.0L and DX10, but in a way it is backwards compatible)

EDIT: Maybe DX15 won't come so i won't talk about these things, it's all guessing.

 

28cm long...wow thats like the size of a normal ruler. Thats intense compared to the dx9 cards.

2 pci-e power connectors...talk about electricity usage!

Water cooled too, can anyone guess a price tag? I would say in the 600$+ easily?

Now im not saying that its all bad its a nice card that Im sure, really powerful (1GB DDR4) too but is it really worth it?

 

I think I read somewhere, theinqurier.net i beleive that it consumes 300watts of power, it willbe a long time before we see those cards in laptops, either that or a 20 cell battery with fuel cells to keep them charged to run it.

 

My point was simply that the cards will pretty much always be backwards compatible, even if the software isn't. DX10 doesn't run DX3.0 games, but DX10 GPU's can still do it.

Of course, I don't know if there's ever going to be a DX15, but if there is, it (the software library) won't be compatible with DX9 or below, but the hardware will still work with these old versions. There's no reason for it not to.

 

Ok i'm sorry i thought you mean't the software itself in stead of the hardware backwardscompability

 

DX10 will probably be all that, let's face a few realities:

- DX10 will be Vista only, with little support at first

- DX10 GPU parts will be only the VERY high end for the first while - so $600 plus parts only initially - we know for a fact that not everyone buys $600 plus video cards

- DX9 cards are on all the roadmaps for the long term and will be the mainstream gaming cards selling day to day for a good long time

So wait if you want. But don't expect DX10 parts to be cheap or plentiful for a good long time.