DX 10 Support

[Amy L]

For a system upgrade I am looking at the x1950XTX cards (probably a
crossfire setup). However, it seems that they currently do not have DX10
support? Is this correct - or will DX10 support come in the form of drivers
down the road? Is it a waste of money to buy a card without DX10 at this
point in time. What raises my concerns is that Nvidia with the 8800 has
DX10 support. The 8800 card looks pretty nice.

Any thoughts?
Amy.

 

[Tony DiMarzio]

For a system upgrade I am looking at the x1950XTX cards (probably a
crossfire setup). However, it seems that they currently do not have DX10
support? Is this correct - or will DX10 support come in the form of
drivers down the road? Is it a waste of money to buy a card without DX10
at this point in time. What raises my concerns is that Nvidia with the
8800 has DX10 support. The 8800 card looks pretty nice.

Any thoughts?
Amy.

If you want/require DX10 support in your new graphics card (and you probably
should with Vista only weeks away) then your choices are any in the 8800
series from NVidia, or any in the R600 family from ATI. The X1900 series
(including X1950XTX) does not include hardware support for DX10. No future
driver update will add support for DX10 in the X1900 series because the
hardware does not possess the required capability.

NVidia 8800 series is available now, however NVidia has not released a DX10
driver, only DX9.

R600 series from ATI are due in Q1-07.

My advice is wait for ATI to release its DX10 cards. By then DX10 will be
worth having and you can compare ATI's cards to NVidia's.

Tony

 

[JLC]

For a system upgrade I am looking at the x1950XTX cards (probably a
crossfire setup). However, it seems that they currently do not have DX10
support? Is this correct - or will DX10 support come in the form of drivers
down the road? Is it a waste of money to buy a card without DX10 at this
point in time. What raises my concerns is that Nvidia with the 8800 has
DX10 support. The 8800 card looks pretty nice.

Any thoughts?
Amy.

Well it all depends on how long you are willing to wait for games that
will totally support DX10. I've read many articles on this topic and the
consensus is that it's probably going to be a lest 2 years before DX10
games will be mainstream. Also you have consider, do you want to upgrade
to Vista right away? Because you can only use DX10 with Vista, it is not
backward compatible with XP. And you also have to factor in the price of
these new cards. They're expensive, and buy the time they come down in
price, you could have been enjoying a card you buy now.
Here's what my thinking is. I just built a new PC, why? Because I
don't plan on upgrading to Vista for at lest a year or more. And I
wanted to be able to enjoy my games now. I bought the x1900XT with 256MB
on board instead of 512, and I'm very happy with it. The price is great
(I paid $260 for it) but I'm sure you could find it cheaper.
If you are planing on a crossfire setup then what I recommend is to
buy the x1900xt (256) which is a great card, then wait until the DX10
cards come out. It would be a waste of money to invest in two x1950xtx
cards, when a single x1900xt will give you great gaming performance
until the DX10 cards come down in price and the bugs are worked out in
Vista.
JLC