Games and DirectX 10 (espec. LotRO)
SpyNavy posted in a forum about AoC:
"I have the following configuration - will I be able to play this or do I need to bump up my timeline on buying a new PC?
AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 2.4 GHz, 2 Megs of RAM and an ATI X1950 Pro
Thanks "
I responded to him with two posts, which I'd like to offer in a new thread for discussion:
"In January I bought a couple of NVidia 8600GT boards from EVGA for my gaming computers, for about $130 each. That's a pretty cheap cure for what ails you. The 8600 was the first chip that supported DirectX 10. The chip wasn't much faster that the 7000 series, but it's pretty capable and fast enough. So, not sexy, but unless you NEED to spend 4 times as much, you might wanna give this board a try. Reasonable resolution (1280 x 1024) and good frame rates (85Hz I think). I am cheap and I don't pay for snazz."
(I'm cautious talking about frame rates because I don't know enough about game video internals. I run my pc desktops at 85 Hz and it has made a wonderful improvement over 70 Hz, but one which has been almost impossible for me to pin down. Your eyes just seem to like it much better, how about that? Also, I didn't check that the 8600 is certified for the AMD 64-bit architecture.)
"Regarding DirectX 10, using it added a huge amount of clarity and sharpness to LotRO screens. LotRO seems to be big on atmospheric effects like blowing snow, fog, floating volcanic ash, etc."
So I wanted to start a discussion about gaming with DirectX 10. My overall experience has been that almost no games take advantage of it yet. But LotRO does, and it seems to make a ton of difference.
What do you think? What has been your experience?
After eight months of having no issues whatsoever and loving the new interface and layout, I recently moved from a dual boot to Vista exclusively. That said, I still run games in DX9. The differences can be nice, although they tend to naturally be in games that are already graphical powerhouses. Most developers are using the same features. Soft shadows, god rays, smoke and water that look and react more realistically. Nice in games like World in Conflict, Bioshock, etc. but usually too much of a framerate loss to keep on all the time. (I'ld rather have better AA than god rays).
The problem right now is most developers are building games from the ground up using DX9 and then adding the odd DX10 stuff on top of it, which is why most people see insignificant differences at high performance loss. It's a Catch-22. You don't want to make a game DX10-focused because that shuts out the majority of potential customers, and as a result the majority doesn't see a compelling reason to make the jump.
Your favourite game is over-rated.
I have had zero problems with Vista and LOTRO. However, I have a dual-core Intel and a 8800GTX (HP Blackbird) so I'm pretty well set in the hardware department. That being said, I was ROCK-solid in XP but in Vista I've had two lockups over the course of 4 months (yes I count that as zero problems). World in Conflict, Quake Wars, Sins of a Solar Empire, Civ4, and Company of Heroes are very very good as well performance and quality-wise.
XBL Gamertag: Bear Patrol
It definitely seems that most games don't take advantage of DX10. It does also seem that LotRO may have been designed from the ground up to shine with DX10 though. The screens can be hard as hell to read with DX9. For night scenes, I had to turn brightness and contract waaay up. Better with DX10.
DX10 with Vista does seem to be a mite less stable, though not enough to run screaming from the room.
Kuddles, how are you measuring frame rate? Through true science (metrics,) or by guess and by gum? Not to knock by gum measurement.
AA = Anti-Aircraft?
I have gotten fewer frames/sec. (by gum) when servers were overloaded.
I tried to move to Vista exclusively but I haven't been able to make PDA synchronization work under Vista. At work I run a Vista machine networked to an XP machine that knows how to synchronize.
Well, you got the first word right
Anti-aliasing
XBLive: Ruckus
Keep in mind that all the "DX10 games" you're currently seeing are pimped DX9 games. There's no application to really take advantage of the API and you shouldn't expect any huge native DX10 titles thanks to (1) 360/PS3 being the lead-plattforms for many games, and (2) DX10 being Vista-exclusive at this point.
dx10 is only being used right now to run some of the more graphics-intensive operations in dx9 more efficiently. Almost all of the things that are being shown in dx10 can be done in dx9, but just with much more powerful hardware.