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Direct X 11 - Dx10 hardware compatable (Screenshots in OP)56kilorape.
Waka Laka
Riding the stuffed UnicornIf ya know what I mean.Registered User regular
Riding the stuffed UnicornIf ya know what I mean.Registered User regular
News from GameFest, DirectX 11 was unveiled.
The company calls DirectX 11 a "big step forward for gaming, adding features onto existing DirectX 10".
Key components of DirectX 11, will include:
o Full support (including all DX11 hardware features) on Windows Vista as well as future versions of Windows
o Compatibility with DirectX 10 and 10.1 hardware, as well as support for new DirectX 11 hardware
o New compute shader technology that lays the groundwork for the GPU to be used for more than just 3D graphics, so that developers can take advantage of the graphics card as a parallel processor
o Multi-threaded resource handling that will allow games to better take advantage of multi-core machines
o Support for tessellation, which blurs the line between super high quality pre-rendered scenes and scenes rendered in real-time, allowing game developers to refine models to be smoother and more attractive when seen up close.
Well that's good, DX10 compatible and some good features, lets just home it's not the tremendous clusterfuck like DX10 was.
Some more Dx 11 info and tech screens
Looks a bit waxy but hey, still nice.
Best water ever? Needs to be in a game environment before the medal goes out.
Not sure what is being demonstrated, possibly global illumination ( light bouncing off objects)
The company calls DirectX 11 a "big step forward for gaming, adding features onto existing DirectX 10".
Key components of DirectX 11, will include:
o Full support (including all DX11 hardware features) on Windows Vista as well as future versions of Windows
o Compatibility with DirectX 10 and 10.1 hardware, as well as support for new DirectX 11 hardware
o New compute shader technology that lays the groundwork for the GPU to be used for more than just 3D graphics, so that developers can take advantage of the graphics card as a parallel processor
o Multi-threaded resource handling that will allow games to better take advantage of multi-core machines
o Support for tessellation, which blurs the line between super high quality pre-rendered scenes and scenes rendered in real-time, allowing game developers to refine models to be smoother and more attractive when seen up close.
Well that's good, DX10 compatible and some good features, lets just home it's not the tremendous clusterfuck like DX10 was.
Some more Dx 11 info and tech screens
Looks a bit waxy but hey, still nice.
Best water ever? Needs to be in a game environment before the medal goes out.
Not sure what is being demonstrated, possibly global illumination ( light bouncing off objects)
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On the other, my 8800GT has a non-variable-speed fan and I totally would replace it at the drop of a hat to be able to run my computer while asleep.
Still, awesome. Yay software-only upgrades.
Compatibility with DirectX 10 and 10.1 hardware
seems to suggest that in fact it is a software only update, where DX11 will in fact work on DX10 cards.
Anyone care to explain the tessellation thing? I assume it means: mathematical model of surface -> polygons, but I'm sure I'm missing something about it. Hardware support for it or something?
I am intrigued
I assume that's what they are saying. DirectX 10 hardware will be able to use these new features, DirectX 11 hardware will be optimized for them.
Vista gets a much worse rep than it deserves. I was so resistant to get Vista until I actually got it, and I have no complaints in any way at all.
Using on-board sound, then, I'd gather?
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DirectX 10 HARDWARE will be compatible with DirectX11, not DirectX 11 will be compatible with previous versions.
To anyone who recently bought an Nvidia 280 series, you can already take advantages of GPU accelerated games ( GRAW 1 and 2 PC, Operation Downtown Destruction, Unreal 3 ( PhysX pack ) etc etc) with the latest Firmware release. There are options to allow PhysX emulation through CUDA. This will become available also to people with 8800GTs and above soon.
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I'm fairly certain that the multiple core thing mentioned in the article refers to only the DirectX API being optimized for multiple cores (though I wasn't aware that was a problem with the API - so maybe I'm wrong on this). I'm not sure how they'd be able to magically insert multithreading into any app that uses DirectX 11.
I'm using an Asus Xonar PCI-E card, Vista runs fine with it.
There I said it.
As for DX11. I can only imagine the kind of crap this is going to get from the fanboys. Hopefully they follow through on the backwards compatability though.
If I recall correctly from my graphics course (a few years ago, so I may be completely wrong), you are essentially correct. Tessellation is the process of breaking down a surface (or existing polygon) into triangles. In the case of (non-planar) surface -> triangles, this is a necessary process because frame-buffer renderers work by (after some matrix transformations) drawing 2d triangles to a rectangular mapping of pixels.
Tessellation is also used to subdivide existing triangles into more triangles. In the old days of per-vertex lighting, this was necessary to get good-looking lighting. In today's world, this would be useful for doing displacement mapping. Which is basically like using a normal map to transform actual geometry, instead of just using it for 3D-looking lighting applied to a flat triangle. However, in order to get displacement mapping to look good, you need a lot of polygons, otherwise the displacement of the vertices won't be smooth (which looks terrible).
I am sure there are other uses for hardware-accelerated tessellation, but that is the one that immediately comes to mind.
M-audio USB Preamp actually. Drivers are still in Beta, and getting protools to work was a fucking bitch, but I haven't had any problem with them that anyone other than someone who works with sound professionally would run into.
While it's criminal for a modern desktop operating system not to allow the user to exploit that hardware to it's full potential, there's no reason for it to require that much hardware for smooth operation or perform poorly on technology two years old. It's sloppy. I'll eventually use it anyway.
Back on topic, I'm for any free upgrade which magically makes my video card capable of higher levels of l33t. So, I read the "better multi-core support" as, "Developers! Recompile your existing games with the Direct X 11 API and get free multi-core support!" Or is it more "Developers, we have made it slightly easier to use multi-threading, if you happen to be currently making a game."?
It's more "Developers! Multi-threading won't be any easier, but if your game is multi-threaded there's a chance it'll run slightly better with DirectX 11 than DirectX 10!"
Home Premium is good enough, I'd say. You get stuff like Media Centre and Movie Maker, which aren't in Business.
Personally, I have Ultimate, since I wanted the advanced backup stuff that comes in Business (Complete PC Backup/Restore and Previous Versions), but also wanted the Home Premium-exclusive things (Business doesn't have Media Centre or Movie Maker.)
Anyway, this news is pretty nice, although I'd have to ask when the expected timeframe for games that'll actually use DX11 is. As far as I've heard/read, there aren't a lot of games out there which have DX10 support, since there's still a lot of people refusing to make the jump to Vista. Having just got a DX10 card, though, it's good to know it'll still be useful for a while
If you don't mind voiding your warranty, google "accelero s1 8800gt" and become free from the jet engine stock cooler.
Steam/PSN/XBL/Minecraft / LoL / - Benevicious | WoW - Duckwood - Rajhek
Fixed.
Yeah I read that as the same thing. :x
Void Warranty? How do they know you have installed a custom heatsink when you can just take it off and put on the old one again? I don't remember ripping any stickers or VOID IF REMOVED labels on my EVGA 8800GT.
Hold on a second. It's a passive cooling system but it's better than the fan currently provided? How does that work?
I would've expected having a dedicated fan blowing all the hot air out the back would be better wouldn't it?
I'd say Home Premium 64 bit. I am not sure the extra price for ultimate is necessary for a few more toys that you probably will not use. But most definitely 64 bit since you can have 4 gigs for well under a hundred dollars and 8gigs for $160-ish...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145184
The fan that comes with the stock heatsink works fine. The problem is that the stock heatsink is garbage. With the passive cooling, you need to make sure you have decent airflow in your case. Everyone I know that is using the Accelero has no problem at all and in fact has cooled their card down ~20 degrees or more. It is fairly easy to install. If you have poor airflow or want a few degrees more out of it, they offer a 'turbo module' that is just two connected fans that you can attach to the S1.
Here is the review that sold me on the cooler: Click
The heatsink has 4 heatpipes and a huge surface area. In comparison I have a 9600GT with a Accelero S2 (only 2 heatpipes) and in a case with only two fans (CPU: Zalman 7X00 and powersupply: Fortran Source something) it idles at about 50c which is comparable to a low cost GPU cooler with a noisy fan.
With a 8cm fan at about 1000rpm (low enough that I can't hear it) it dropped to 34c idle.
Edit: Beat'd
Also if you like me have no interest in swapping GPU coolers ECS elitegroup sells 8800GT and 9600GT with Accelero coolers.
I'll save my excitement and such for when I see it in action.
Some people, myself included, have been fine with using the stock glue they come with (I used some zalman copper video ram heatsinks I had laying around). However others, including a friend of mine, had issues with these staying on and had to epoxy the heatsinks on. Once you pass that point your warranty is pretty much doomed.
Also if you have a spare 120mm fan laying around, preferably something on the silent end, you can zip tie it to the S1 instead of buying the turbo module. Doing this dropped my idle/load temps by about 8c, from the S1 with no fan.
Steam/PSN/XBL/Minecraft / LoL / - Benevicious | WoW - Duckwood - Rajhek
But yeah, we don't really need to rehash this, I just wanted to mention that Clear Sky may give me a reason, if I can't access the new graphics goodies in XP (with a hack or otherwise).
I don't see why it should be. I can't say I've run into problems running any old games on Vista, and for DOS games there's DOSBox.
Most I've had to do for the odd title is enable compatibility mode.
What games do you need to run?
All of them.
Actually, my backlog isn't exactly epic, but there's a hell of a lot of stuff on there. If you have signatures enabled, just click on the giant rectangle.