Direct X 11

[spearace]

Can anyone tell me what difference DirectX 11 will make to gaming? I've not noticed anything different between Windows 7 and Vista when I am in the middle of a game.

Does it mean future games will look better, but something written for Direct X 10 won't be any different?

 

[Ian]

There might be slight performance improvements for non DirectX 11 games, but more than likely you'll need to wait for a DX11 game to be published to notice the new features. Even now, there are plenty of DX9 games still coming out (DX10.1 is the latest version at the moment).

Some reports suggest that DX11 will be pulled from Windows 7, so it could be a patch at a later date.

If you want to read more on the technical aspects, Bit-Tech have a very good article on what you can expect from DX11:

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2008/09/17/directx-11-a-look-at-what-s-coming/1

 

[Psikea]

depends on a hardware supporing feature , not any video gpu will use dx 11 or dx 10 features

 

[cdoublejj]

all my games usually update or install earlier versions o dx they are't over writting the dx that came with seven are they? i mean they are all 32bitgames goingto their proper directory.

 

[clifford_cooley]

At its GamesFest event in Redmond today, Microsoft shared the first details of DirectX 11 – the numerically superior successor to DirectX 10.1 – which will feature full support for Windows Vista, as well as future versions of the popular operating system. Worried about hardware? DirectX 11 won't just ignore your fancy DirectX 10 or 10.1 cards – nope, it offers support for both of those standards, as well as for new DirectX 11 hardware.

But what's new and exciting about DirectX 11, you ask incredulously. How about a "new compute shader technology" that gets your GPU ready to do more than just boring old 3D graphics – instead "developers can take advantage of the graphics card as a parallel processor"? Not doing it for you? How about "multi-threaded resource handling that will allow games to better take advantage of multi-core machines" since, y'know, most every computer nowadays has multiple cores? Or "support for tessellation" which allows "developers to refine models to be smoother and more attractive when seen up close"? Something in there has to tickle your fancy.

What it probably means for most of you is this: as hardware manufacturers develop new chipsets to take advantage of DirectX 11's new features, you should be able to snag some of that older 10.1 gear for a song.

source from July 2008

TG Daily: That backwards compatibility suggests that it is the same as DX10 API had for DX9 GPUs?

Unangst: What you are going to see is functionality in DirectX 11. For example, things like being able to support better multi-core, multi-thread machines, using multi-core in a more optimal way. We can now put multi-thread optimization into the API itself. Those benefits will be available whether you're running DirectX 10.0, 10.1 or 11 hardware. Ideally, once we can see all the driver optimizations, all the things that need to happen over time, we do believe that because of addition of things like multi-threading and better multi-core support, you are actually going to see some performance improvements even on existing hardware. That is the goal and that is what we are hoping to achieve.

The other thing is, even though this is a good overview, there are other key technologies that we are adding to DX11 - things like a compute shader. The compute shader allows you to use the GPU directly for non-rendering purposes, using a GPU in a GP-GPU way. Tessellation is also a big add-on. Tessellation is a super-set of something that was debuted with the Xbox 360’s ATI R500 Xenos GPU. Trust us, there is plenty more to come. Tessellation will work on compatible DX10, 10.0, DX11 hardware.

Source from July 2008

In about two weeks, Microsoft is going to officially announce the DirectX 11 specifications. The new API is supposed to be the default one in the upcoming Windows 7 (codename Vienna), but Fudzilla informs that DX 11 will also be available for Vista, since Vienna is based on the Vista kernel. This means that DX 11 can be released by the end of 2009. However, I reckon that we won’t see playable games using the new API sooner than summer 2010.

DX11 will bring quite a few improvements to the DX10 architecture, including support for Tessellation (which is already supported at a hardware level by ATI’s cards), compute Shaders - to further help the CUDA and GPGPU projects, CPU multithread support and some new texture compression. It will also bring the improved Shader model 5.0. Unfortunately, we won’t see any ray tracing support for the next several years.

Tessellation will be the next best thing and ATI foresaw this about two years ago. The tessellation algorithm can subdivide objects and give them better level of details and more polygons, making normal mapping quite obsolete.

source from July 2008

 

[Kougar]

Here's some preliminary info on AMD's DX11 GPU, Evergreen, along with a photo of the core. Or rather quite a few cores:http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3573

From what I was hearing NVIDIA will also have a pair of DX11 GPU's launching shortly before or shortly after ATI launches theirs. We may see an exact repeat of the GT200 vs HD 4000 cards, but supposedly NVIDIA's GT300 card is one heck of a size upgrade from a GTX 285... it will be interesting.

 

[Omni]

to take all adbantages from dx 11 , we need dx 11 compatible video gpu and games developed aacording to this new dc specification

btw nvidia is almost ready to unleash the monster , GTX 380 with 2 gb of gddr5 ram

 

[Thrax]

The NVIDIA GT300 is late now, and will be even more late when it launches in November if NVIDIA is exceptionally lucky.

The GPU just taped out, and it's 5 months from tape out to retail launch unless the alpha GPUs have problems. If they do, you can kiss the GT300 good bye until 2010.

NVIDIA's 40nm process is terrible.

 

[spearace]

Does reducing the size from 50nm to 40nm mean that it's cheaper to make a chip, in terms of material and cost to make? Or does it just mean they can make it more complex in the same space and cost? ATI have been able to get 40nm working fine for ages on the 4770 IIRC. Shame NVIDIA can't do the same.

The GT300 looks insane from what I have read, so I hope they get decent yields and can make a full scale launch.

 

[Thrax]

It can actually mean both, Spearace. There are two things that can be done with a die shrink:

1) Take existing GPU designs and shrink them to 40nm so you can make more chips per wafer. This reduces cost and boosts profit margins.

2) Take a new GPU design at 40nm and cram it into a package that's the same size (or larger) than the 55nm version to increase the computing power per cm^2 of chip space. This maintains, or may even raise prices.