Topic: DirectX 10.1 = New Vid Cards AGAIN!

[[ISC]Phaser]

At the SIGGRAPH 2007 http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20070815123340.html# Microsoft announced the details of the new DirectX updates version 10.1. They pointed out that to ensure full support of DirectX 10.1 you need not only to install Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista, but you may also need to replace a graphics card. Contemporary graphics accelerators from NVIDIA GeForce 8800 and AMD/ATI Radeon 2900 may not support all the new features added to Direct3D 10.1.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6824&Itemid=2  web-site made certain things clear thanks to their phone interview with Microsoft's Sam Glassenberg, who said:

"DirectX 10.1 fully supports DirectX 10 http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20070815123340.html# No hardware support is being removed. It's strictly a superset. It's basically an update to DirectX 10 that extends the hardware functionality slightly."

According to Sam Glassenberg, DirectX 10.1 will be fully compatible with all graphics cards supporting DirectX 10. He said that the current updates are very similar to those performed for DirectX 9 back in those days. All the company wants to do now is to increase the API life cycle. This statement was addressed to majority of worried gamers who got the impression that Microsoft announced GeForce 8800 and Radeon 2900 based graphics cards may become useless after the new updates have been pushed. However, Sam confirmed that existing graphics cards may still not be able to use all the new features of DirectX 10.1. At the same time he stressed that applications designed specifically for DirectX 10.1 are very unlikely to appear, because overall, the updates aren't that critical.

So, although DirectX 10.1 will support current DirectX 10 graphics hardware, today's DirectX 10 hardware will not be able to support ALL of the features of DirectX 10.1, which includes incremental improvements to 3D rendering quality.

However, the gamers who have already acquired contemporary DirectX 10 graphics accelerators shouldn't be too upset. Upon  request http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20070815123340.html# version 10.1 sets whatever was available in the previous releases as a standard. As for the innovations, among them are 32-bit floating-point operations (instead of 16-bit ones, used today by default) and obligatory support of 4x FSAA.

"the gamers who have already acquired contemporary DirectX 10 graphics accelerators shouldn't be too upset"

TOO UPSET?? They should be outraged!! Not 6 months and their 500.00 plus cards are already obsolete?? That's a crime! Plain and simple ...a crime!! Microsoft should ensure the new features are capable of being delivered via new drivers!

Once again, Microsoft puts the shaft to all the Gamers who went out and spent the BIG BUX buying DX10 capable Graphics/Video Cards. I notice there is no mention of the DX 10 capable card's drivers being upgradeable to handle the new features in DX10.1.

When does the milking of the "cash cow" users abate? The new features in DX10.1 should be driver enabled. Lately, Microsoft is so out of touch and seemingly into themselves that they appear to be unaware or incapable of considering the current state of the market or the consumer situations on a global basis. Its almost as if MS's marketing & PR people are in a "dream world".

[Nemesis]

I imagine AMD and nVidea are rather upset as well.  It takes time to recoup the costs of a redesign and they haven't had it yet for the DX 10.0 cards