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[W1nTry]

These ppl.... geez

Vole shoots foot with 10.1 upgrade

DX10 hardware is already obsolete

By Wily Ferret: Thursday 09 August 2007, 09:13
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.

Simply put - if you're a developer, why bother with 10.1? µ

[Gambitt]

Ouch. That HAS to hurt. And this was after they pushed back the release date so that they could get everything up to mark.


Now I'll be honest I was looking at vista, and the req's and thinking to myself that that was going to be just do-able with my machine, if it's do-able at all.  I remember reading posts (elsewhere) about upgrading to meet the requirements. And now just over 6 months later they say that a minor upgrade disqualifies a lot more people from using the Dx10.1? Let alone any future major revisions!

Time to change the rule of thumb for aquisition of "brand spanking new" items to at least a year after release!


Time to go back to playing real games. Abandonware FTW!

[Spazosaurus]

Actually, it doesn't hurt at all. There are no performance enhancements, just more options for tweaking. Besides, by the time the 10.1 hardware matures, i'll be upgrading.

[Arcmanov]

sssstttteeeeuuuppppsssss......

Typical M$ eh.  I know most developers aint takin tha chain-up yet, so we good.
DX10 not even fully accepted yet.  Far less DX10.1.

[Gambitt]

Actually, it doesn't hurt at all. There are no performance enhancements, just more options for tweaking. Besides, by the time the 10.1 hardware matures, i'll be upgrading.

I noticed where it said no real enhancements in the copy and pasted article. But to be told after upgrading specifically for DX10 that, on the face of things, your equipment is now very close to obsolescence...

Understand my point, i.e., not everyone wishes to be on the "cutting edge" with their equipment, but most everyone wishes to be able to play most games or use most pieces of software. And here we are talking about an OS that required in many cases an overhaul to begin with, and now, a mere 8 months later is putting out a very minor "upgrade" that makes the initial overhaul a "waste of money".

That's rough. And it HAS to hurt. It seems that the author would agree given his comments on blood pressure and cheesing off.

[Spazosaurus]

Actually, it doesn't hurt at all. There are no performance enhancements, just more options for tweaking. Besides, by the time the 10.1 hardware matures, i'll be upgrading.

I noticed where it said no real enhancements in the copy and pasted article. But to be told after upgrading specifically for DX10 that, on the face of things, your equipment is now very close to obsolescence...

Understand my point, i.e., not everyone wishes to be on the "cutting edge" with their equipment, but most everyone wishes to be able to play most games or use most pieces of software. And here we are talking about an OS that required in many cases an overhaul to begin with, and now, a mere 8 months later is putting out a very minor "upgrade" that makes the initial overhaul a "waste of money".

That's rough. And it HAS to hurt. It seems that the author would agree given his comments on blood pressure and cheesing off.

Dude...I could'nt care less what happen with Vista, SP1 and DX 10.1, at least for the rest of the year. In case you have been living under a rock these last few months, you'll know that almost all developers are staying on the DX9 codepath and those who using dx10 ill also have a dx9 path. Personally, I still use XP since its performance in graphics (and just about everything else) is better than that of Vista.

Again...it DOESNT hurt since despite that dx10.1 thing I still play ALLL games on ULLTRA settings and when the next generation comes out, i'll be getting that too.

[TrinireturnofGamez]

planning to hold my x1800xt till next year... By then i'll get an 8800GT class card for fairly cheap .

In any event the games worth playing will be dx9 ie. Starcraft II ....

Still playing at max settings and with anti aliasing in some games , medium settings for a few months won't kill meh.

[Gambitt]

Actually, it doesn't hurt at all. There are no performance enhancements, just more options for tweaking. Besides, by the time the 10.1 hardware matures, i'll be upgrading.

I noticed where it said no real enhancements in the copy and pasted article. But to be told after upgrading specifically for DX10 that, on the face of things, your equipment is now very close to obsolescence...

Understand my point, i.e., not everyone wishes to be on the "cutting edge" with their equipment, but most everyone wishes to be able to play most games or use most pieces of software. And here we are talking about an OS that required in many cases an overhaul to begin with, and now, a mere 8 months later is putting out a very minor "upgrade" that makes the initial overhaul a "waste of money".

That's rough. And it HAS to hurt. It seems that the author would agree given his comments on blood pressure and cheesing off.

Dude...I could'nt care less what happen with Vista, SP1 and DX 10.1, at least for the rest of the year. In case you have been living under a rock these last few months, you'll know that almost all developers are staying on the DX9 codepath and those who using dx10 ill also have a dx9 path. Personally, I still use XP since its performance in graphics (and just about everything else) is better than that of Vista.

Again...it DOESNT hurt since despite that dx10.1 thing I still play ALLL games on ULLTRA settings and when the next generation comes out, i'll be getting that too.

Read meh post over again nuh. I not talking about you personally, I talking about all the millions of users who dont have $ growing on trees to perform major upgrades every time someone decide to change the recommended system req's. I talking about all the people who paid to upgrad or custom build systems based on the specs for vista, to have those specs change this drastically in a few months based on a minor revision.

I not saying you cant still run XP or even ME, but since I havent been living under a rock for the last few months I also know that MS has been pushing vista exclusive software to try and convince people to migrate. I also know that a lot of people were complaining because their "older" software giving hell to run on vista.

BTW you remember the jump to Windows NT? That time we got to choose between stability and gaming. Even back then, when games were crappy by comparison to what we have now, as a gamer back then it hurt hearing that we had to make that choice.