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Direct X 9 compatible video cards...


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I was looking at an older tech support thread concerning video cards. Someone had posted a link to Tom's Hardware which showed an extensive list of some of the latest video cards and their attributes. One of the columns in the list was DirectX compatibility. The newer FX Nvidia cards were DirectX 9 compatible while the older Ti cards were only DirectX 8 compatible.

I have a Chaintech GeForce Ti4600 4X AGP card. Nice card and plenty quick. I have no problems whatsoever with graphics or speed with my current setup. I am running DirectX 9.0b. What am I missing by having a video card that is only DirectX 8 compatible while running DirectX 9?

Thanks to any of you in the know on this one.

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You're not missing out on anything when it comes to CM. It is best to match the version of DirectX with what the video/sound drivers require, which in the case of the latest drivers is DirectX 9. Even though your videocard only supports up to DirectX 8.x calls, having DirectX 9.x installed is probably best.

DirectX 9 offers programmers more/improved/different routines to draw things and apply lighting effects, etc. Some of the latest games may utilize DirectX 9 for their effects, but even these titles will often maintain some sort of compatibility with DirectX 8.x-only capable videocards.

With only DirectX 8.x support you'll miss out on some of the neatest effects if the game has been programmed utilizing graphics calls that are unique to DirectX 9. At the moment there are only a handful of games that actually utilize DirectX 9.

CMx2 has be rumored to be written in the OpenGL API, a competing, but more open graphical API. OpenGL has long been used for first-person-shooters and now it is the defacto graphical API on the Mac for OS X.x (thus the primary reason for possibly shifting all platforms to OpenGL for CMx2).

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OpenGL is an excellent graphic API - and the support versions/drivers change alot less frequently than Microsoft's Direct X protocol. And yes, OpenGL is supported by OS X, which has been a fairly serious problem of late.

As far as the Ti4600 being a DX8 part - which it is - the GPU will use software to translate the DX9 calls it recieves, where the DX8 calls (or commands) get directly processed by the GPU itself (which is much faster). For Nvidia chips, you need a FX5200 or better to have a DX9 part. Let me see if I can find that chart for ya...

Here it is.

This whole thing has been quite an experiment for my brother - we've been trading off a Ti4600 in his box with a FX5600 non-ultra, he plays Dark Age of Camelot online. While the Ti4600 is a faster GPU in many ways, DAOC does employ some DX9 calls, which the FX5600 translates directly. We see them being roughly equivalent in this game.

Same thing goes for 3DMark2003, which employs DX9 into its test suite. So the FX5600 actually beats the Ti4600 by a small margin using this as a benchmark.

In theory, CM would run faster with the Ti4600 card, as there are no DX9 calls in its code structure.

Hope this makes sense. Never post before A)your first cup of coffee, or B)your first beer.

Hpt. Lisse

[ May 09, 2004, 12:52 PM: Message edited by: Hpt. Lisse ]

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