Source wrote:Vole shoots foot with 10.1 upgrade
DX10 hardware is already obsolete
REPRESENTATIVES from the almighty Vole have been speaking at Siggraph over the last few days, and what they've said hasn't exactly lowered the blood pressure of many attendees.
Microserfs were there to espouse the greatness of DirectX 10.1, the next revision to the DX graphics spec, which is due to arrive with Windows Vista SP1.
Here's the thing. DX10 hardware - such as the GeForce 8800 or the Radeon 2900 - won't work with the new 10.1 features. The 0.1 revision requires completely new hardware for support, thus royally cheesing off many gamers who paid top whack for their new hardware over the last few months on the basis of future game compatibility.
But these gamers shouldn't fret too much - 10.1 adds virtually nothing that they will care about and, more to the point, adds almost nothing that developers are likely to care about. The spec revision basically makes a number of things that are optional in DX10 compulsory under the new standard - such as 32-bit floating point filtering, as opposed to the 16-bit current. 4xAA is a compulsory standard to support in 10.1, whereas graphics vendors can pick and choose their anti-aliasing support currently.
We suspect that the spec is likely to be ill-received. Not only does it require brand new hardware, immediately creating a miniscule sub-set of DX10 owners, but it also requires Vista SP1, and also requires developer implementation.
With developers struggling to justify including DX10 features in their games (see the recent comments by John Carmack and Mark Rein), they're going to be about as likely to further limit their product's market as they are to start developing NES games again. This is especially true given the incredibly limited benefits 10.1 is bringing to the party.
Well, I feel justified in not upgrading my graphic card yet, don't you .
Photography Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
Oh wow, another stupid Inq statment.
Everything in DX10.1 is capable in DX10, as they stated out, it 'adds' nothing, in essence, this is avoiding cap bits in DX9. The one real addition, not mentioned, is an ehnanced featureset of of cubemaps(if I recall correctly).
This will change nothing.
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Vendetta wrote:Doesn't this happen every three months in the graphics card market anyway?
Not really, the last big 'upgrade' was directx 9c's shader model 3, as I recall. And that was supported starting with like the nvidia 6 series and the ati x1000 series and only within the last year or so (I think) have games started to really make use of it. I'd say, 2 years or so.
Vendetta wrote:Doesn't this happen every three months in the graphics card market anyway?
Not really, the last big 'upgrade' was directx 9c's shader model 3, as I recall. And that was supported starting with like the nvidia 6 series and the ati x1000 series and only within the last year or so (I think) have games started to really make use of it. I'd say, 2 years or so.
Even better, very few of the 9c's upgrades were used untill recently, meaing a 9700Pro could still do all the effects.
Brotherhood of the Bear | HAB | Mess | SDnet archivist |
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