DirectX 11 Comes To Vista
Posted 10/31/09 at 09:00:32 AM by Justin Kerr

Microsoft launched Windows 7 with full DirectX 11 support, but until now, Vista users running ATI’s newest 5000 series cards were left out in the cold. Its not like you’ve been waiting months to play the newest DX11 titles, but at least you now have the comfort of knowing that you don’t need to upgrade your OS in order to take advantage of your new GPU.
DirectX 11 isn’t a massive leap forward over the DirectX 10.1 found in Vista SP2, and in fact, is actually a superset implemented using WDDM (Windows Display Drive Model). Windows XP users will need to continue making do with DirectX 9 because it is not compatible with WDDM, and Microsoft has been pretty clear that this isn’t likely to change anytime soon.
The platform update KB971644 should be delivered to Vista users automatically via Windows update. Now all you need is an Radeon 5870. DirectX 11 support in Vista seems as good a reason as any don’t you think?
I haven't even experienced
Submitted by hookey4 on Sun, 11/01/2009 - 8:32am
I haven't even experienced DX10 yet, and now DX11 is coming out. Technology always outpaces me.
I don't think DX 10 or even
Submitted by DBsantos77 on Sun, 11/01/2009 - 9:16pm
I don't think DX 10 or even 10.1 was being developed as smoothly like DX 11. Tesselation is the biggest feat of DX 11, looks amazing.
-Santos
Nice let's hope Microsoft
Submitted by johnkilmy on Sun, 11/01/2009 - 5:20am
Nice let's hope Microsoft has really improved it.
John K
electric cigarette inc.
I don't get it. Tell me one
Submitted by tehR0XX0Rz on Sun, 11/01/2009 - 4:46am
I don't get it. Tell me one more time why we should be wetting our pants over DX11?
I seem to recall reading how game after game ran slower under DX10 with little appeciable difference in visuals.
Now, is DX11 going to be the same thing: Slower, only slightly different, and useful only as a benchmark?
Do magazines get kickbacks for pimping Microsoft products?
Better than DX10
Submitted by bloodgain on Sun, 11/01/2009 - 5:48am
DX10 wasn't the improvement everyone hoped for (much like Vista), but it's also fair to say developers didn't spend enough time with it to use it as efficiently as possible. DX9 is well-known to developers, who have had plenty of time to learn to use it for realistic graphics that run relatively fast on even somewhat older DX9 hardware.
The idea of developers taking years to gain efficiency can be seen in multi-core (parallel) processing -- users should see near 1:1 speedups for every core added in computation-heavy apps, but in reality users are rarely seeing speedups of more than 50%. Multi-core CPUs are just making multi-tasking faster so far. Parallel processing has been around for a couple of decades, but commercial developers have only had an incentive to move away from sequential processing in the last few years.
Likewise, it should take a year or two before we really see what DirectX 11 is capable of in real world applications (test/demo applications are easier). That said, DX11 does come with some nice features:
1) It takes advantage of the unified shader architecture introduced in DX10 (which even sped up DX9 games). It should, arguably, take better advantage of the architecture than DX10 did due to improvements which should have been made in the low-level libraries. By all indications, this should take little or no effort on the part of the game/application developers -- which is a good thing for us, as not every developer is as adept at understanding hardware architecture's effect on their code.
2) It adds support for "new" hardware tessellation (AMD technically already had tessellation units, but built-in support will make this more useful to everyone). Tessellation, the process of breaking down complex shapes into smaller, simpler shapes (triangles, in this instance), is a relatively intensive process that can be made much more efficient and effective by using dedicated hardware designed to handle it. For the developers, it means less work and better results. For us, it means more detailed graphics that take less time to generate (less time per frame means more frames per second).
3) It brings better support for compute shaders. While the concept has existed for a while, DX11 brings with it explicit compute shader support. For one, this means that GPUs can be used more efficiently for general purpose applications (think video transcoding). For another, it means that both developers and hardware manufacturers have more freedom in how to apply algorithms to objects and data sets. This means fancy details like motion blur, soft shadows, depth of field, and other post-processing graphical enhancements will again look better and run faster. Also, since compute shaders are more mutli-purpose, you could see improvements in AI or physics processing if your card has enough processing power to handle the extra duties.
So, in short, it will take time for developers to use DX11 to its best, and probably a couple of patches for Microsoft to weed out the remaining bugs. But there are improvements over DX10 in DX11, including some that software developers -- both the game-making type and more real-world type -- may get excited about this time.
Why bother?
Submitted by shnoogie on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 9:33pm
Any effort spent adding things to Vista is less time spent improving Windows 7.
Just. Let. It. Die.
Same can be said for Windows Mobile; 6.5 is a complete waste of resources that could have moved Windows 7 up to a late 2009 release.
October 22, *2009*
Submitted by bloodgain on Sun, 11/01/2009 - 12:59am
I'm really not trying to be a jerk on purpose here, but on the planet I live on Windows 7 DID get a late 2009 release.
Also, being a software developer and knowing just a little about Microsoft's development cycles, neither Vista DX11 support nor Windows Mobile development are going to affect Windows 7 development. Different teams work on different products. If a product is dropped, a few of those people will fill empty slots in other teams, but some of them will also just go work for a different company. That is, Microsoft isn't dividing it's manpower -- it hires more people to develop more products. That's how business works.
DirectX 10 was a complete
Submitted by damicatz on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 5:00pm
DirectX 10 was a complete failure and almost everything that was wrong with DirectX 10 remains in DirectX 11. The fact that the majority of games coming out today are still using DirectX 9 should be telling.
Game developers should do everyone a favour and just use OpenGL.
thanks
Submitted by cenghan on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 8:02am
thanks DirectX 11 isn’t a massive leap forward over the DirectX 10.1 found in Vista SP2, and in fact, is actually a superset implemented using WDDM (Windows Display Drive Model). Windows XP users will need to continue making do with DirectX 9 because it is not compatible with WDDM, and Microsoft has been pretty clear that this isn’t likely to change anytime soon. ? http://www.zirzir.net
spammer?
Submitted by johnny3144 on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 1:41pm
umm... this comment is a spam?
games that support dx11
Submitted by pepper_roni on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 7:41am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_11_support
What the point ?
Submitted by igoka on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 6:31am
It's actuallly good that MS doesn't force us in to buying new OS , however there is almost no games that support DirectX10 , developers still stick to DirectX9 . Is there any game exist or coming that support DirectX11 ?
Nope. Your right, there is
Submitted by snapple00 on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 8:30am
Nope. Your right, there is no point for advancing technology. Games will indefinately be written in DX 9.
(the above is sarcasm)
well... with current
Submitted by johnny3144 on Sat, 10/31/2009 - 1:43pm
well... with current generation of console dragging us PC down... there really isn't much point moving to directX 10 or 11.
10 failed
Submitted by pepper_roni on Sun, 11/01/2009 - 12:01am
10 failed becaues 10 sucked... it doesnt help that consoles still use dx9, but when the ps one was using dx whatever the pc was way ahead. IF dx11 helps performance and adds good features it will take off to a certin extent. If it sucks like dx10 did then its doomed
merhabalar
Submitted by direkfilm on Sat, 11/14/2009 - 4:39am
i like it website. thank you my friend...
http://www.direkfilm.net
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