info about direct x

hey guys, i'm somewhat of a noob so please don't bash me. what exactly is direct x? and also i hear all this about the geforce 8700 being able to run dx10, would the 7950 be able to run it as well?

 

wikipedia is your friend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_x

 

DirectX is Microsoft's graphics library. Most games use it to talk to the graphics card, and provide 3d acceleration. That way, game developers don't have to code for each card and driver specifically. They just have to code for DirectX, and DX will then deal with the particular graphics card in the computer.

And no, DirectX 10 requires support for a handful of new features that Geforce 7xxx and earlier don't support.

 

DirectX 10 is the new version of microsoft's proprietary API. It's kind of like an operating system for games to communicate with hardware.

Games designed in the past few years ran on DirectX 9. This year, with the release of Centrino Duo and the 8xxx series graphics cards from Nvidia, comes the release of DirectX 10. The 7950 won't be able to run DirectX10 games in DX10 mode, but it should run them quite well in DX9 mode. It'll be a while before you 'have' to upgrade to a DX10 card, so I wouldn't worry about it unless you have to be on the bleeding edge.

Currently the only game out that was written from the ground up to support DX10 is Bioshock.

 

And there's no noticeable difference between Bioshock DX10 and DX9 that I can tell. I played quite a ways through the game with both, and details maxed (Core 2 Duo E6850, 8800 GTS 640MB)