Direct X capable

G

Gordon.C

Member
Hi,

I am wondering what makes a graphics card Direct X (some version) capable.
I understand that Direct X is piece of software communicating with the graphics card helping the programmers and the game to run.

What I dont understand, why graphic cards are assigned to different version of Direct X. Should not software work on any hardware available if the software is written correctly and optimized?

Maybe I am missing something. Is there maybe something on the graphics card missing to be able to run the particular Direct X?
 
Differnt versions of Direct X have differnt hardware requirements. There are certain things a Direct X 10 card can do that Direct X 9 (and lower) cards can't do.
 
So that means for example a Direct X9 card is missing some physical feature that is required by Direct X10 am I right?
 
Gordon.C said:
So that means for example a Direct X9 card is missing some physical feature that is required by Direct X10 am I right?
Click to expand...

Yes. With DirectX9, cards had 3 kinds of shaders/processors: Geometry, Texture, and Pixel. The problem was that, say, the geometry shaders would be maxing out while, say, the pixel shader had nothing to do.

With DirectX10, DirectX10.1 and DirectX11, they are unified, and generally called stream processors.
 
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You know my concern is that games today are programmer with DX9 because they have to support older hardware and than DX11 because that is the acme of todays gameplay.
But where does that leave cards supporting DX 10.1? Does it mean they wont be supported the best they can ever again? Since DX10 is not the priority now
 
DX10.1 was never really used in games. it was used in a few (like assassins creed, but a later patch removed support, and only supported DX10 after that) and it offered some texture and anti aliasing performance improvements. perhaps why AMD/ATi chose to use it. Even though the cards themselves had hardware support, only the latest catalyst version (9.12) supported DX10.1

My theory is that DX10 and DX10.1 will net get used in any new games because of the advancements made with DX11 (tessellation, among other things) unless there is a specific reasonf or it.
 
Yes that is kind of what I fear of. DX 9 will be needed until the old hardware is wiped of the market and after than DX 11 will be standard leaving DX 10 far away and forgotten.
If that happens, all graphic cards made to run DX 10 and 10.1 were useless
 
People say that DX10.1 cards can run DX11, but it hasn't been tried. I know for a fact that Ati included Tesselltion units on their cards for a long time before DX11 (back the X1950 generation of cards i think) but were never implemented.

If you really want DX11, just get a 5770.
 
To be frank it is more important to me to have steady and nice graphics when playing not to worry much about DX 11 I was only wondering whether I could get out of my card DX 11 support, I am using HD4870X2
 
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