does halo2 require dx10?

^
if it does, this really bites cause I just got a m1710 with 7950gtx and I don't want microsoft to alienate every dx9 user from playing any future games.

 

This has been confusing a lot of people. You DO need DirectX 10 (Vista) installed on the machine, but you DO NOT have to have a Shader Model 4.0 (sometimes referred to as DX10) graphics card (ie. 8800 series). This is confusing a lot of people. DX10 ships with Vista, and only works on Vista. Games written for DX10 exclusively will only run on Vista. All modern graphics cards will have Vista drivers that work with DX10, though they don't support some of the latest-and-greatest features.

So, you can certainly run Halo 2 PC as long as you upgrade to Vista.

 

I still don't get why Microsoft is taking so long to release the PC version of Halo 2 when it has been out on the console for years.

 

I am not sure if Halo 2 is DirectX 10 or not; there has not been a lot of news on it lately from what I have seen.

If you want to play Halo 2 (rather, the closest thing to it on PC), then get Halo Custom Edition. It's free, and fun. You need a copy of Halo and a CD-key to run it.

 

Wait... Halo 2 is coming out on PC? Is this confirmed or just assumed?

 

It is confirmed. It's going to be a Vista-exclusive as the flagship product for Microsoft's "Games for Windows" campaign touting Vista as a "gamer's OS" - which, as anyone who's benchmarked it can attest, is absolutely absurd. We're talking 30-50% framerate drops average induced by the upgrade...but that's a rant that's been covered enough.

Point is, yes, it's coming - for those of deep wallets.

 

That sucks beyond all reasonable belief.

 

I agree with Vampire all the way. This is just a way of 'forcing' people to buy Vista. Time to go Linux Vampire?

Charlie

 

Deffenetly! PM me if you'd like to get started, Charlie

 

WHAT!?! PM? And keep all behind closed doors? Make a thread and share the switcher's story, let the rest of us read about the tough decisions, the exhilarating highs, the gut wrenching GPU driver lows!

...Please...

And, I wonder what Halo 2's hardware requirements are? If its any more than a 1GHz processor, 192MB of ram, and a 64MB DirectX 8 graphics card, it'll be a bad port.

 

How so? You can't map console specs directly to a PC. It's going to require more than that pretty much no matter what. There's a lot of nifty tricks that can be used on consoles to get better performance, but which simply won't work on PC's. There's also a handful of abstraction layers hiding access to the actual hardware, which is great for making the same code work with 200 different GPU's, but also slows things down a bit.

 

That's why I added the overhead.

 

And you've ported games from XBox to PC so you know how much that overhead accounts for, have you?

Another little thing you might want to keep in mind is that the PC version is going to have to output to a *much* higher resolution, at a much higher framerate. A fixed 30FPS (with occasional choppiness) at TV resolution is not going to cut it. So no, I think the reqs are going up, and for good reason.

Last I checked, it was also supposed to be an improved version of the game, which means higher reqs. And last but not least, why would they waste their time trying to make the game hit those reqs? They might sell 5% more copies (not many people have that kind of systems, and are interested in Halo 2, and even fewer also run Vista), while raising development costs and time by... well, more than 5%.

Anyway, last I heard, Halo 2 would require DX10. I might be wrong here, but if it didn't, I don't see what would be Vista-exclusive about it. DX9 games should run on both XP and Vista. True, they could then insert a check on the OS, and just refuse to run on XP, but anyone want to guess how many minutes it'd take for someone to bypass that?

 

Would'nt Halo 2 run on Direct X 9L?

 

No, but I've played enough to tell what is possible and what is not. Just look at the port of OFP for Xbox.

Well, considering the Xbox1 churns out 60fps at 480p, and some games at 720 or 1080i, thats higher res than my laptop monitor, and we are talking minimum specs, I don't find your point very valid.

Well, they're programming it for an operating system that fewer than 1% of users run, I'm sure more than 1% would have the specs I'm talking about.

 

Doesn't Halo 2 run 30FPS? It didn't seem all that smooth when I saw it run. The Xbox *can* churn out 60FPS, yes, but it depends on the game, and I'm pretty sure Halo 2 only ran 30FPS. (Not 100% sure though, someone correct me if I'm wrong. But as far as I could see by googling, even the first Halo ran 30FPS only). And the Xbox only renders at one fixed resolution (480p). It might then upscale that image to a higher resolution if the output display supports it, but as far as the GPU is concerned, it's only rendering at regular TV resolution.
Few people play games at less than 1024x768 on PC so I'd assume their minimum reqs target something like that, which means 2.5 times as many pixels on screen. And that's assuming the same framerate. If they target 60FPS, we're up to 5 times as many pixels per second.

1% of what? Vista users? I highly doubt it. And since it's targeted at Vista users only, there wouldn't be much point, would there?

I don't know, but since DX9L is just the Vista port of DX9, that would be really hard to make Vista-exclusive. A DX9L game should run just as well (or better, considering Vista's overhead) under XP. So I'd assume DX10, but that's just my guess. Can't quote any sources on that.

 

I'm hoping some techno buff can do something which will let people use it on XP

 

well considering vista requirements itself is 1gb ram, and dx9 you can expect halo2 requirements to be a wee bit higher than that

 

What really gets on my nerves is that Halo 2 is a normal XBox game and the video in that thing is no more powerful than a GeForce 3 or 4 series card.

 

Bungie confirmed that Halo 2 ran at 30fps

Halo 2 uses no DX10 effects, but it is Vista exclusive.

Comparing Console specs to PC specs never works. Look at the specs of the Wii and the graphics of Rayman for example.

Xbox rendered most games in 480p/i. Several games were released that were rendered up to 720p. X Men Legends, Tony Hawks Underground off the top of my head. Enter the Matrix was up to 1080i, though it looked like crap and it was bugged with rendering errors. There was no upscaling.

 

This is a better explanation than what i understood about dx10, I guess there's really no need for me to wait 6 months to hopefully get a dx10 laptop

 

so how long do you guys think i could survive with a DX9 card, gaming wise?
Basically how long before games will require DX10??

I'm so tempted to buy right now, but i'm willing to wait if i need to...I've heard conflicting opinions on when dx10 cards are gonna come out, everything from spring 07 all the way to winter of 07....

 

the same happnned here, i was tempted to just build a desktop with an 8800 gts then buy a low end laptop but im pretty sure that if you buy a m1710 or a sager that you can put in another graphics module at a later date

 

That describtion of DX10 in Vista is actually incorrect. I don't want to sound all knowing, but I explained my understanding of the implementation of the new Windows Display Driver Model in this post:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=1677022&postcount=16

People keep saying that current GPUs will be able to run DX10 just without the DX10 benefits, which is incorrect since that assumes that DX10 is backwards compatible. It is not. That's kind of the whole point of DX10, to increase efficiency by cutting legacy ties. So in Vista instead of having a single DX API, there will be a separate DX10 API and a separate DX9 and older API. Only if you have a DX10 GPU, with DX10 drivers, and a DX10 game will you be able to use the DX10 API. Anything less than that or if you have a DX10 GPU but are playing a DX9 or older game you will be using the DX9 or older API.

 

DX10 isn't compatible with older DX versions as you say, but its going to be a long time until DX10 only games start appearing. Even Vista exclusive games like Alan Wake or Halo 2 will have DX9 run paths so they can run on 'older' systems.