DX10 Games do NOT run on XP. And chances are they never will (at any reasonable speed). There IS a dev version of DX10 for XP (or at least XP 64), but if it hasn't been leaked yet it probably never will.

@ Kev - You think thats bad? My Dad bought a GTX and then never installed ANYTHING on it. It now sits on top of his printer because it's so big he can't install a £3 WiFi card *rolls eyes*

Quote from gohfeld23 :

Do you get full support? E.G. does everything work including DX10 software?

No. I bought it because it's a quick card, and I figured if I ever wanted to do something like rig up a three-monitor LFS rig all that performance overhead would come in handy.

I was looking at the DX10 features touted in Bioshock earlier today, and according to the manual there are: "... various enhancements for DX10 such as dynamic water ripples, soft edges for particles, and crisper shadow edges.". I don't think I'll miss those!

Quote from gohfeld23 :

BTW, what card is it?

It's a 8800GTS / 640Mb. It's about the size of a bar of gold and weighs about the same.

Quote from Jakg :

DX10 Games do NOT run on XP.

Yes they do. I played diRt on my friend's Windows XP computer. They downloaded some warez version of DX10, that runs on DX9 video cards. Stop pretending you know everything. Just because you overclock your computer doesn't mean you are some l337 h@xz0r.

I might consider Vista if there would be LFS or some other sim requiring direct x 10, until then I wait and see if there is real need for some feature, I'm going to avoid Vista if I do upgrade quite long time, it still is in phase where you need to download fix and patch almost daily, I prefer to use computer not to spend all time maintaining it.

For some priorities are different, but remember to judge what you need based on what you need, not what is cool or fancy and you will find what really is right product, I don't think there is absolute answer which one to choose, but DX10 is not one of main things, it is something that can wait.

I would almost say that there will be next windows before anyone really needs to get forward from dx9. Only those who like to be in front line and those who like to get prettier graphics than classmates really need to get Vista because of dx10.

Quote from wheel4hummer :

Yes they do. I played diRt on my friend's Windows XP computer. They downloaded some warez version of DX10, that runs on DX9 video cards. Stop pretending you know everything. Just because you overclock your computer doesn't mean you are some l337 h@xz0r.

drop the f*cking attitude - DiRT has a DX9 MODE, i played it on XP as well, but in DX9 mode. Just because you seem to think that everyone has it "in for you" doesn't mean you need to fulfil that policy by being a d*ck.

If you actually UNDERSTOOD the workings of DX10 you'd know that while DX10 on XP IS possible, but unlikely to be any good, DX10 on a DX9 card isn't as they don't have the necessary stuff (like Stream Shaders etc).

I'm probably about to be told off by someone like Shot who actually understands the proper defination of the DX9 vs DX10 difference, but my point stands.

DX10 on a DX9 card? That would be like getting a DVD disc to play on a regular CD player. Not quite possible I think.

Quote from Jakg :

EDIT - PB3200 - 32-Bit can support up to 4 GB of memory, but you ALSO have to include GFX memory, Sound Memory and various PCI stuff in that

no no no _no_ NO
none of these devices map into the normal address space of your os (not by default anyway) with the exception of gfx memory under vista where its been virtualized
unfortunately no one told ms that it would take game developers a few months possibly years to actually use the virtualized vram instead of addressing it direclty as theyve done for years now which leads to those crazy memory footprints that serve no purpose whatsoever as you seen in anands articles

if anyone honestly thinks vista isnt bloated consider that it does cause games to crash by pushing them past the 2 gig barrier through increasing their allocated address space by 256-768 mb which the game neither uses nor is even aware of in the first place

Quote from Jakg :

Comparing ME and XP isn't really fair - 2000 was more stable than XP on release, but XP matured and became a pretty damn good OS.

and still there is no good reason to run xp over 2k
back when i switched i did so because of some obscure 2k error with my ps2 ports (still havent figured that one out) that made using the pc impossible and now several years later the only reason why i didnt install 2k when i got a new pc was wider colourspaces for icons (16 colour systrays look fugly)

if anyone of you finds a way to bump the icon colourspaces in 2k up to xp levels i think id install 2k back in a heartbeat

Quote from Jakg :

If you actually UNDERSTOOD the workings of DX10 you'd know that while DX10 on XP IS possible, but unlikely to be any good

I'm probably about to be told off by someone like Shot who actually understands the proper defination of the DX9 vs DX10 difference, but my point stands.

actually i dont know much about directx at all but from what i know i dont see any reason why dx10 should run any worse on xp than on vista (not that it could considering the abysmal dx10 performance of todays cards) other than that ms apparently really needs something to shove vista down the throats of at least some of their userbase (gamers)

Even though Vista has the (not so) almighty DX10, I don't think gamers should fall into MS's trap. Us gamers shouldn't even touch Vista until it proves to handle games better and faster than XP. So far all the gaming benchmarks out there support XP. Until the benchmarks favour Vista, there is no reason to use it. MS is trying to slow down PC gaming for some reason with DX10, I've heard this mentioned before, and I don't think I want to encourage them by using Vista.

Quote from Jakg :

Just because you seem to think that everyone has it "in for you" doesn't mean you need to fulfil that policy by being a d*ck.

It is my friend who told me it was DX10. If he was wrong, then that's not my fault. Ulitmately, I really do not care. Proving me wrong does *nothing* since I just don't give a shit. You were right about one little thing, you must be a f*cking genius. I'm just an **** ****.

Quote :

Even though Vista has the (not so) almighty DX10, I don't think gamers should fall into MS's trap. Us gamers shouldn't even touch Vista until it proves to handle games better and faster than XP. So far all the gaming benchmarks out there support XP. Until the benchmarks favour Vista, there is no reason to use it.

I think that's really sensible. Being just behind the cutting edge seems like the best place to be these days. I can't imagine I'll never upgrade to Vista, but I'd rather do it once the drivers mature, games are available, and performance is much improved. XP till then for me.

PS, here's a thread on another forum about the DX10 on DX9 project. I think consensus says that DX10 may be possible on XP sometime down the road, but will never be able to perform as well as on Vista.

Another article here

Does someone have a link to a decent article (a NON MS document) summarizing the main differences between DX9 and 10 and the benefits of 10.
I'd like to find out more about the tech part of it but most I found was MS ads type of articles.

Thanks in advance.

@wheel4hummer and Jakg
Can you two please stay civil about this. Especially you Wheel. I have nothing against either of you so don't take this as an insult. I just think there's no need for hostilities.

Quote from gohfeld23 :

I have nothing against either of you so don't take this as an insult.

Even if you were insulting me, I wouldn't care.

Here's one from a while ago. It summarises all the main points..

http://www.firingsquad.com/har ... phics_preview/default.asp

Quote from Electrik Kar :

Here's one from a while ago. It summarises all the main points..

http://www.firingsquad.com/har ... phics_preview/default.asp

Thanks, great read.
It seems the only drawback currently is that most game devs are still coding the "old" way but with patience, that is sure to change soon so we shoud starts seing devs making use of the reworked system.

Now I'm convinced that once Vista matures, it's very well capable of becoming a very good OS for gamers. Sadly it still feels a bit beta.

Thanks for the link again.

Quote from Shotglass :

and still there is no good reason to run xp over 2k

Well there was for me at least, HDD accessing is much faster in XP than what it was in w2k.

I'm still using classic style theme in XP though (looks like w2k or w98), function before eye candy


One very annoying thing in Vista is that when you use laptop without network for few days, next time you plug it it is completely useless for anything between 5-20minutes because it downloads and installs updates from windows update automatically. Even I have instructed it to install at 3am it starts installing those immediately I plug network in and it is so slow to use during those updates that better just leave it on table and to do something else.
It does same even if you would keep computer off for few days and then start it with network available, can't really express how much that annoys me as quite often I would need just do some quick check up from net and it does that, pffff.

Quote from JTbo :

Well there was for me at least, HDD accessing is much faster in XP than what it was in w2k.

I'm still using classic style theme in XP though (looks like w2k or w98), function before eye candy


One very annoying thing in Vista is that when you use laptop without network for few days, next time you plug it it is completely useless for anything between 5-20minutes because it downloads and installs updates from windows update automatically. Even I have instructed it to install at 3am it starts installing those immediately I plug network in and it is so slow to use during those updates that better just leave it on table and to do something else.
It does same even if you would keep computer off for few days and then start it with network available, can't really express how much that annoys me as quite often I would need just do some quick check up from net and it does that, pffff.

...erm, I leave windows updates off especially with a notebook. Ok, when you've bought the notebook for the first time, from the time it left the factory to the time you plugh it in there's gonna be one or two major security updates...but honestly, there's no need to leave ms updates turned on, every couple of months is fine, even then if you just download the update manually and select to see whats being updated you'll see it's mostly nitty-bitty stuff. I'd rather not with notebooks, as theres too many different hardware setups in the notebook market which MS is renouned for messing up....and they are a pain in the ass, ass you pointed out above

Baseline is that do everything against MS recommends and you get smooth performance

Quote from JTbo :

Baseline is that do everything against MS recommends and you get smooth performance

...I've gone back to IE7, meh it just seems faster, but lacks some functionality and bell+whisles of Opera. I havent installed Opera yet, I don't think I will be any time soon

Quote from CSU1 :

...erm, I leave windows updates off especially with a notebook. Ok, when you've bought the notebook for the first time, from the time it left the factory to the time you plugh it in there's gonna be one or two major security updates

Honestly, I don't think this is a good idea.

Updates are an important part of your operating system. They just don't fix (important) security holes, they also repair major flaws. True, some of them may be unneeded and some of them may even cause a computer to malfunction under specific circumstances, but these cases are quite rare. So turning them off is generally not a good idea, unless you constantly check manually for updates.

The best way, for me, is in the middle: configure Windows to automatically notify (or even download, to save time) updates, and always install them manually revising the list. Uncheck unwanted (for whatever reason) updates and, if you wish, ask to be no longer notified about them. You can always retrieve no longer notified updates manually via the Windows (Microsoft) Update web site. Then install the wanted ones. If a reboot is asked, do it as soon as you can.

Edit: Microsoft proposes - at least in Italian versions - an automatic install at 3.00 AM of updates as default for XP. This is far from being the best default possible: your computer has to be on at 3.00 AM, and it can have an unattended reboot, and this may cause some unwanted task disruptions. It's a good idea to change it.

how is vista compaired to xp as far as moving files around and modding them?

"modding"? Modding what exactly?

Quote from speed1 :

how is vista compaired to xp as far as moving files around and modding them?

My experience is that it is sluggish, but then again I compare it to DSL running from CD and using USB memory stick as drive where I modify them.

I could compare to XP running in my other machine, but that would not be fair as laptop has 5400rpm drive with unknown cache size where as XP machine has 7200rpm sata drive with 16MB cache.

Quote from JTbo :

Well there was for me at least, HDD accessing is much faster in XP than what it was in w2k.

it is ? i never heard of that one before