Although DirectX 10 was released quite a while ago but still there are very few games today that really take the full advantage of its features. Hugely popular First Person Shooter titles and Role-Playing Games all barely push the sheer graphical power of the newest version. As the DirectX 10, was introduced in Windows Vista, 3D features support the same effects as 9, guaranteeing compatibility across the board. Although this may sound very good, allowing for a more standardised games development environment. But the reality is not so colorful, because Microsoft will soon be regulating the introduction of 3D features, leaving companies such as NVIDIA behind. This application programming interface (API) was officially named “DirectX 10.”
DirectX 10 was available to Windows Vista users only at the time of its introduction, but unfortunatelly, you will not find DirectX 10, being released for the Windows XP operating system. DirectX 10 is deeply linked into Windows Vista OS and we currently do not know about the plans by Microsoft to allow Windows XP to officially support the new DX10. In general, DX10 gives much more generic graphic processing model with lots of flexibility and reliability. This will be very crutial going forward, but right now developers still need to make some limitations on shader length and complexity based on the performance of the hardware that exists. Another thing related with the Geometry Shader is the Stream Out functionality that provides the GPU to recycle graphics files without computing on the CPU. Not only is this a hit of performance, it will also gives completely independant of the CPU for particle systems. Take a look at the DirectX 10 performance tested on two nVidia Cards:
If you want to have a DirectX 10 on your computer you will have to go with Windows Vista as your OS, theres nop possibility to launch dx10 on MS windows XP systems. Because of this we will see an expensive upgrade path associated with the experience of DirectX 10. You will need Windows Vista, DirectX 10 hardware and of course some DirectX 10 coded games, what is totally rediculous, that’s why plenty of gamers are turning into PS3 or Xbox. The question that gamer all over the world are asking is: “Will this very expensive upgrade will have positively impact on my my gaming experience enough to justify the cost?” That has yet to be seen and can only be answered with the games we have yet to play. We can however talk about some of capabilities of DirectX 10 with a unknown architecture and answer the question how it can potentially benefits to the gamers. In next reviews we’ll be reviewing later versions of DirectX.