Instinct5 said:
my vid card is dx10 compatible
Interpreting that is contextual. From a
hardware perspective, if you have a fairly recent video card (any of the GeForce8, GeForce9 cards, all the Ati 3000-series cards and I think all but the very bottom bin ATi 2000-series cards ) then those are what we would call "DirectX10 cards". In this context, it means that the card is physically capable of executing a "DirectX10 instruction".
Another perspective, taking the word "compatible" literally, it could just mean that the card wont/shouldnt fail if DirectX10 is installed. This is often used as a marketing gimmic (i.e you'll see, say, a GeForce 7300 -- which cannot physically execute 'directx10 instructions', market itself as 'directx10 compatible' -- which is true -- the card will function fine with directx10 -- it will just be limited to the directx9 instruction set).
If you tell us the card, we can help directly answer your question. (*Looks at sig*, it's a DirectX10 hardware card).
PC Eye said:
The video card itself while being DX10 compatible is not a strictly DX10 required card to see the full implementation of 10 still being a DX9 card in most ways. The current games out are still DX9 based until newer ones requiring Vista and DX10 come out.
That's difficult to read at best and slightly wrong at worst. If I interpret correctly, directx10, in it's "full" implementation, is significantly one up from directx9 (9c even). As we're talking about graphics, I presume you're limiting this to D3D really. It just happens to be that, at the time of launch, there were not many DirectX10 titles our and those that were out were not revolutionary.
As for the last bit, that's incorrect. Hellgate London (current game), is a DirectX10 game. As is Crysis. Both 2007 games and implementing DirectX10 instructions (for better or worse).
Instinct5 said:
ah so it only needs dx10 for certain games and when i play those it will tell me i need that right?
At this point, no game "needs" Dx10. Ignoring any XP-hacks, if you have all the prerequisites (i.e DirectX10 game, DirectX10 HARDWARE-capable videocard, see above, Vista) then you can opt to run it in DirectX10 mode. Otherwise, if the game has been developed decently well, DirectX10 wont even be an option and forcing it will cause it to crash or pop up a message indicating the missing pre-requisite (dependant on game).
smashkirby said:
What games are DirectX10 only? (short of Dev samples of course)
PC Eye said:
Even with Vista coming with 10 included you are still mainly running in the DX9 framework until getting into DX10 games as well as DX10 required model cards. All that will be a wait to see however since even newer games will likely be XP/DX9 compatible still. In fact I run some old 98/ME/2000 games on Vista with 9c installed as well.
PC Eye said:
Once you get into something no longer XP/DX9 compatible requiring SX10 then the Direct X tool will obviously display 10. XP by itself didn't come with 9c but saw an upgrade to it by separately being downloaded whether by updates or manually going to MS to see it downloaded direct.
That is so horribly incorrect (moreso the second quote although if I took the time, I could pick holes through the first). The DWM generally executes in D3D9 mode (DWM is, for all intents and purposes, the windows environment). Regardless of this fact, DXDIAG reports DX10 when the hardware/OS prerequisites are met. Failing that, there is a problem.
PC Eye said:
Not if a bad install of Windows was seen. The software installer for the video card likely saw 9 go on while something was lost when Vista was installed. Once the dxdiag command was used it reported what is lacking. Until a reinstallation is performed you will be limited to 9c there.
DirectX10 was released Nov 30, 2007. The first G80 cards to be released came out mid-2007. However, the G92 was released Oct 29, 2007. Do you mean to suggest that, even though the G80 cards who's drivers work fine for DX10, for some reason, because the G92 was launched a mere month before DX10 was RTM'd, that the driver team just "forgot" and set a magical flag to DX9?
Archangel said:
try the download from the website. I mean it says it has DX9.0c atm, so trying it wouldnt hurt
PC eye said:
Which would be a waste of time since DX10 is not available separately from Vista like previously releases.
Actually, you
can. Sure that looks like DX9. Hell even the dsetup.dll has the signature 4.9.0.0904 which is DX9. But PCEye, if the entire package is DX9 only as you suggest, can you please explain the presence of these cab files:
- NOV2007_d3dx10_36_x64.cab
- NOV2007_d3dx10_36_x86.cab
- APR2007_d3dx10_33_x64.cab
- APR2007_d3dx10_33_x86.cab
- AUG2007_d3dx10_35_x64.cab
- AUG2007_d3dx10_35_x86.cab
- DEC2006_d3dx10_00_x64.cab
- DEC2006_d3dx10_00_x86.cab
- JUN2007_d3dx10_34_x64.cab
- JUN2007_d3dx10_34_x86.cab
- Mar2008_d3dx10_37_x64.cab
- Mar2008_d3dx10_37_x86.cab
acethegamer said:
So you downloaded directX 10? from what website?
Go
here
PC Eye said:
But 10 itself is not available as a separate download you can save to some folder
Depends on how you define "itself". Sure one can argue that you cant download DirectX10 and try and install it on XP and get it to register DirectX10. But to say it's not entirely available would be incorrect. Downloading the current DirectX redist will save DX10 there. Since the DX10 portion can only be registered (i'll refrain from using the word 'installed') on Vista machines, which already have a DX10 stub if you will, it's a moot point. For anyone where DX10 would be a viable scenario, the latest DirectX9/DirectX10 is arguably available online.
tlarkin said:
The user in the post was probably playing a game that ran in both modes and had it flagged for DX 9 for some reason.
Quite insightful. Another possibility is that there could be multiple executable (i.e. Crysis, Hellgate), one for DX9, one for DX10 with it defaulting to DX9 (safer route) until settings said otherwise.
PC Eye said:
With 9c on from some game's installer it wouldn't take much for something like that
Given the cab file breakdown I mentioned earlier, and the likelihood that the "directx installer" is, in fact, such a redist (like its supposed to be), DX10 would be stubbed on (and again see my comments about viable impact on DX10 users)
PC Eye said:
The dxdiag is an old tool at this point for a new OS with a proprietary nature on things
Or you just made a mistake. DirectX, for all intents and purposes, is a bunch of dlls. Dlls have version numbers tagged into them in, well, standard places. DXDIAG is just a gui to query such information (and more).
tlarkin said:
DX is not a set of drivers, its an API, which is in the OS and most likely was not uninstalled by anything. I almost want to bet money on my theory it makes the most logical sense.
Absolutely. This is very likely a third-party coding messup (although doesnt really affect anything substaintial)
PC Eye said:
You could say the same about the catalyst control center being a bridge between hardware and software as well seeing a new app to go with a new set of drivers with each version
Actually you cant. To say so would be a grave mistake. The Catalyst Control Panel (or nVidia's Panel for that matter) is a go-between for the
driver. The driver is the bridge between software and hardware you speak of.
PC Eye said:
Apparently MS changed the rules as I thought where while 10 is not a separate download you can still see it go onto any Vista system most like through the auto detection of the new version
My point still stands
"