If you’ve been using Windows Vista for a while, you’ve long said good bye to the older versions of DirectX. Well, sort of.
Coupled with the Vista operating system, an extensively updated and modified DirectX 10 (in particular, Direct3D 10) has gone hand-in-hand with graphics card manufacturers’ rearchitecting and upgrading their hardware capabilities. But what is all this DirectX fuss about anyway and why should you care?
DirectX is simply a collection of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allows software programs running on Windows platforms to control and utilize specific hardware (i.e. graphics cards, etc) installed in the computer system. In particular, Direct3D is the primary API that PC game developers utilize to develop games that take advantage of certain capabilities that modern day graphics cards provides.
Due to the introduction of Vista’s new driver model (WDDM), Direct3D 10 has been designed around this and also features improved graphics rendering capabilities, including Shader Model 4, which is a set of highly optimized instructions that software programs (i.e. games) utilize to carry out specific calculations that the graphics card needs to perform. For example, if your game character is moving in a particular direction in 3D space, its coordinates and presentation on the display should change accordingly as you control it; it is through such shader instructions that the game’s engine is able to calculate (via graphics hardware) how each individidual pixel representation of the character should look at any given time.
Of course, this is all important and cool for upbeat PC gamers, but as we all know, Microsoft is continuously updating and optimizing code- which at times, could be a scary thought.. With the release of DirectX 10.1 (Direct3D 10.1), not only will users have to update Vista to SP1 (Service Pack 1), they may also have to upgrade their graphics cards if they want to use the newer features (i.e. Improved Shader Model 4.1, etc). At present, NVIDIA does not carry any video cards that can utilize all the features of DirectX 10.1, whereas ATI is pushing out HD4xxx and HD3xxx cards that can.
Regardless of all this, DirecX 11 (another one!?) is in the making and has even made its debut appearance with Windows 7. Microsoft plans to kick it up just another notch as the industry begins to shift focus on GPGPU (General Purpose Graphics Processing Units), where calculation intensive and parallelly optimized GPUs begin to take on more work- general purpose calculations that has long burdened our cherished CPUs. A relief indeed to the almighty CPU, but wait, it gets better. For some time now, many software apps have not been able to fully and effectively utilize the potential of multi-core platforms. With DirectX 11’s improvements, however, application developers will be better equipped to take advantage of all available cores, allowing processing to be quicker and more efficient. And the best part is that older generation graphics hardware (those compliant with DirectX 9, 10, and 10.1) will work with the multi-threading improvements of DirectX 11. The disclaimer is, of course, if you want to experience the finesse of hardware tesselation and Shader Model 5.0 (other features of DirectX 11), you’ll have to find yourself a complying graphics card manufacturer.
In the long run, who will win the race?
Who cares.. in this competitive industry, it’s only a matter of time.
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