(64 votes, average: 4.16 out of 5)
Loading ...As an admitted gaming technology geek, it’s hard not to get excited about the advancements in game technology. As many of you know, DirectX 11 is just around the corner, offering a dazzling array of new toys for game developers and people like me to play with. But as excited as the developer in me is about DirectX 11, I’m even more excited as a gamer, and you should be too. That’s because DirectX 11, in combination with new graphics hardware, and in some cases Windows 7, brings significant changes to the computing experience, changes that mean upcoming games and other applications are about to get a lot better. Let me explain how.
Microsoft, and those of us in the graphics business, have been openly talking about DirectX 11 for around a year now – in fact, to be honest we’ve been talking about it since even before Windows Vista shipped at the very end of 2006! It takes a long time to put together a new version of DirectX and there are often tough decisions about what to leave out while finalizing any one version. So we often agree that the parts which are being left out in the ‘current’ version will find their way into the next version.
So let’s take a good look at what’s in DirectX 11. I’m not going to go into painful technical detail; instead, I will try to look at the consequences of those technical details. One important note, unlike DirectX 10, DirectX 11 isn’t tied to Windows 7, so those of you sporting a Windows Vista system will get to reap the rewards as well.
There are three main areas of impact in DirectX 11:
1. A beast called the tessellator has been added which enables games developers to create smoother, less blocky and more organic looking objects in games. This is the change you’ll probably be most aware of. And it’ll show up when you look at the silhouettes of hills and mountains or the profiles of characters in games. Where artists previously had to trade off quality for performance, now artists will have the freedom to create naturalistic scenery. We’ve gotten used to seeing strangely blocky ears and noses on our opponents. But the new generation of games should allow those opponents to scare the heck out of us instead. The tessellator represents a natural next step in gaming hardware (in fact the Xbox 360 graphics chip that AMD designed already has a tessellator, and AMD graphics hardware has featured tessellator technology starting with the ATI RadeonTM HD 2000 series right up to the latest ATI RadeonTM HD 4000 series cards today).
[An example of tessellation giving characters more definition.]
2. Games programmers will also be given a radically new way to program for AMD graphics chips. The second new beast in the menagerie is the excitingly named “Compute Shader”. It allows games programmers to treat the GPU in a much less graphics-oriented way; indeed, they can almost treat it like a highly parallel CPU. [The buzzword for this is "GPGPU" , see http://blogs.amd.com/play/2008/11/05/the-gpgpu-chronicles/ for details.]
Up until DirectX 10.1 a graphics programmer always had to think in terms of triangles – but the compute shader changes that and allows the programmer a much freer expression of their thoughts. If you try to solve a problem of artificial intelligence or physics, you probably don’t think the problem through in terms of triangles. So the compute shader is a more natural way for the programmer to approach his or her task. On top of that it allows access to some of the features that would otherwise have been hidden away inside our present and future chips and for that reason it will often allow significantly more efficient implementations than heretofore (that means “higher frame rates” to you and me 
).
3. DirectX has been sliced and diced and the internals redesigned to ensure that it is much more efficient at using the horsepower present in multiple CPU cores. This will be a huge win on chips like our AMD PhenomTM II quad and triple core processors [http://www.amd.com/gb-uk/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_15331_15332,00.html] and it will provide the opportunity for both higher frame rates and games which are more realistic, because they contain dramatically more detail.
There are numerous other, less important changes aimed to make the games programmer’s tasks easier. Some so small that you’d have to be a games programmer to care, some (like improved texture compression) are big enough to help out significantly with performance in corner cases.
Quite often you get to hear rather bland but optimistic statements about the future versions of DirectX. “It’ll be faster and better” – but you don’t get to hear much in the way of substantial justification.
This time around I hope it’s abundantly clear – I predict that:
- We’ll see higher frame rates because the way DirectX 11 uses CPUs will be more efficient.
- We’ll see higher frame rates because games developers will be able to use our GPUs more like CPUs.
- We’ll see smoother, more realistic characters and more realistic terrain as we move away from blocky polygonal representations to the kind that are used in movies.
- And a side-benefit, that will help PC gaming generally, is that the new version is easier to use, so it will help to keep game development costs down.
On top of that there’s something worth mentioning here about the evolution of computer graphics. Every generation of DirectX has been designed to be an improvement upon the previous generation. We always make a point of including all the old functionality (so that you can run any of your existing games). This time is no exception; the nearest thing to DirectX11 is DirectX10.1. And it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that I can’t resist mentioning that this means that owners of ATI RadeonTM HD 4000 series graphics have a distinct advantage, since AMD is the only major supplier of graphics chips that supports DirectX 10.1 http://ati.amd.com/products/Radeonhd4800/index.html . DirectX 10.1 is the closest you can get to DirectX 11 until Windows 7 ships.
When it does ship though, get ready for a significantly improved gaming experience thanks to the combination of DirectX 11 features enabled by phenomenal new DirectX 11 hardware from AMD.
Richard Huddy is Sr. Manager Developer Relations at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
(4.65 out of 5)
#1 by toast - June 3rd, 2009 at 08:40
noticibly better graphics AND improved frame rates? i’m very skeptical
#2 by Kakkoii - June 3rd, 2009 at 15:40
@toast, Improved frame rates because games will be able to better utilize all of a CPU’s cores. And the GPU will be able to take over even more types of operations that the CPU used to do, and do them much faster.
#3 by mdavis - June 5th, 2009 at 17:25
@toast, Visual quality and performance is always a trade-off. With tessellation developers can make things look better in the foreground for example (better visual quality) but make models less complex in the background (helping increase performance). Those models in the background or off in the distance don’t necessarily need as many polygons to look good, so reducing their complexity helps drive greater performance (i.e. FPS). In general, we see that tessellation helps objects in games (characters, terrain) look better but without the performance hit associated with that detail were you try to achieve the same look without tessellation.
#4 by Joseph - June 3rd, 2009 at 12:55
How does one access this hardware improvement from OpenGL?
#5 by Kakkoii - June 3rd, 2009 at 15:38
@Joseph, If your talking about the tessellation, It’s a software improvement, not a hardware improvement. Same goes for the performance increases brought on by DX11.
For general computing on a GPU, I don’t really know.
#6 by Richard Huddy - June 25th, 2009 at 05:29
@Kakkoii, tessellation is not just a software improvement – there’s a part of every DirectX 11 chip which is there to handle tessellation. It’s part of the core functionality fo DirectX 11 and will probably be the big “visual difference” maker – games that use it have the chance to look dramatically more realistic. Trust me – I’ve seen what’s in development and the difference can be very significant indeed!
#7 by mdavis - June 5th, 2009 at 17:30
@Joseph, Updates to OpenGL will expose new capabilities such as tessellation. There’s been no timeline for when that will happen, but AMD is ready with supporting hardware when the time comes.
#8 by Kakkoii - June 6th, 2009 at 19:29
@mdavis, AMD and Nvidia, it’s getting annoying with all this boasting over being the first to show off a DX11 chip, as if Nvidia isn’t making one lol. Nvidia already has their DX11 chip taped out also. So it’s either they are just a little bit behind AMD, or they merely choose not to show it off at Computex.
It’s going to be an interesting battle this upcoming generation because of the supposed power of Nvidia’s up coming 300 series DX11 chips.
#9 by Richard Huddy - June 25th, 2009 at 05:53
Joseph,
I’me uncertain of the exact timetable for this but we’ll be distruting an OpenGL driver shortly after the hardware ships. I believe that will happen this year too…
RichardH
#10 by Kakkoii - June 3rd, 2009 at 14:12
Lol, reading near the end of your article sounds like something you’d hear coming out of North Korea. It sounds so smug and like your really stroking the company.
But the rest of the article was a nice read, thanks.
#11 by Richard Huddy - June 25th, 2009 at 05:56
Kakkoii,
It sounds like something that would come out of North Korea? Hmmm, no, I think it’s comes from TSMC in Taiwan.
)
And thanks for the positive comments too – much appreciated.
#12 by MariusX2 - June 3rd, 2009 at 18:43
Sounds to good to be true x)
#13 by Patrick Alexson - June 3rd, 2009 at 20:55
Looks to me that, with DX10, the cost benefit ratio is too high. Maybe poor utilization or poor resource management in games today but you seem to have to have a killer system to obtain the respective performance with DX9 and then sometimes it looks visually the same.
#14 by Richard Huddy - June 25th, 2009 at 06:05
Patrick,
I know what you mean about the DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 games sometimes looking very similar – I guess that’s something that has tarnished the early reputation of DirectX 10 for some. But I’d also point out that we see some great looking games on DirectX 10 these days – HAWX is one of my favourites, and it simply could not ever look that good using DirectX 9. It takes advantage of every last detail of modern hardware to create a terrific visual experience.
On top of that the Muti-Threading changes in DirectX 11 will mean that balanced systems will be a better choice and havng a good triple-core or quad-core CPU will pay off very well indeed. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, so we’ll have to wait for games developers to start writing using the DirectX 11 API – but when they do you should get a good deal more gaming value out of your system.
I’m happy to confirm that in my day job, working with games developers, I see a great deal of enthusiasm for this new way of coding.
RichardH
#15 by asdf - June 4th, 2009 at 10:48
This reminds me alot of the talk when geForce cards were still new. There’s something funny about textured polygon graphics and blue eyed marketing hypes.
#16 by Cliff Forster - June 4th, 2009 at 16:21
This is exciting. If Direct X 11 balances the hardware load better by utilizing the CPU cores more effectively it could make PC gaming more assessable to a wider range of system specs.
I think we are very close to seeing PC gaming return to glory. Its the superior platform. Hardware prices are falling offering amazing 3D rendering power on a very reasonable budget, and DX11 looks like its going to leverage that to make everything perform even better.
#17 by xfloggingkylex - June 5th, 2009 at 01:05
I am excited about DX11. Each side props their own features (ATi has 10.1, Nvidia has Phsyx), but neither can deny that DX11 is going to be a huge step in the right direction.
#18 by Rambaldi - June 5th, 2009 at 23:35
@xfloggingkylex, I believe Nvidia after saying 10.1 isn’t worth it for quite a while are going to begin supporting it as well http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/14085/65/
#19 by xfloggingkylex - June 8th, 2009 at 13:41
@Rambaldi, Too late now, DX11 is just around the corner. Nvidia is just doing this now so it doesn’t look like they are behind in anything, even though ATi has been preaching 10.1 for a while.
#20 by Mark Davis - June 8th, 2009 at 20:16
@xfloggingkylex,
I believe they would want DX10.1 in their next low end/mobile gpus because Windows 7 uses it for the newer aero interface. And i think its more costly to make a low end/mobile part with dx11 features when the target market isn’t going to be gaming to much.
#21 by NetAntwerp - June 6th, 2009 at 06:18
Hi Richard,
I don’t think AMD should be solely focused on the Windows 7 specific DX11. Tessellation is available on ALL of ATi’s GPGPU-capable graphics cards on both DirectX and OpenGL – The last public Ruby demo (Whiteout) uses the tessellator to draw the terrain.
Focus should also be put on having solid support for OpenGL as well as standalone compute (OpenCL). At the moment ATi poorly supports OpenGL while nVidia runs OpenGL applications 2-3x faster than ATi does.
It will be years before game developers fully use DirectX 11 – OpenGL (and OpenCL) should not be ignored with sloppy implementations.
@xfloggingkylex: ATi works with Havok for Physics and Image Metrics for facial animation.
#22 by 133 - June 6th, 2009 at 14:13
i heard this all before 1000000 times, and the difference is … 0.
#23 by jonny - June 6th, 2009 at 18:57
do u guys have any plans for producing win7 certified mainboards soon? with a directx11 graphix chip on it? id appreciate it a lot!
#24 by Richard Huddy - June 25th, 2009 at 06:13
Jonny,
Moving our DIrectX 11 tech from discrete graphics down to motherboards is definitely in our pipeline – but unfortunately I’m not allowed to look that far ahead in my public statements. Also serious games players know that discrete graphics (i.e. an Add In Graphics Board) is the best way to play games. We’ll offer you plenty of choices – this isn’t just a solution that will be on sale for several hundred dollars, we’re always working hard to bring gaming to the masses – and that means getting well under a hundred dollars too…
RichardH
#25 by Mark - June 7th, 2009 at 00:01
Nothing beats, or ever will beat, Adventure for the Atari 2600.
#26 by Dan - June 7th, 2009 at 02:31
This is nothing new. Essentially you pass the low poly model to the gpu then run a geometry shader that tesselates the polygons, then apply a displacement map to it which corrects the vertex positions.
The improvement in speed and performance comes from not having to pass massive poly models across to the gpu.
#27 by Richard Huddy - June 25th, 2009 at 06:18
Dan,
I can’t agree that “this is nothing new”. Games don’t dare do what you describe on a large scale because the performance cost for doing so on DirectX 10 hardware is simply too great. The tesselator changes all that – because data will be handled inside the chip and will not need to move backwards and forwards between the GPU and its memory.
THe improvement in speed comes from not having to handle or even store these large poly models at all. And that turns out to be a very substantial benefit…
RichardH
#28 by Redge Hammer - June 7th, 2009 at 19:48
“The tessellator represents a natural next step in gaming hardware (in fact the Xbox 360 graphics chip that AMD designed already has a tessellator,”
With Dx11 coming out will this mean anything for my game experience on my 360?
#29 by Mark Davis - June 8th, 2009 at 20:22
@Redge Hammer,
heh probably not, because i believe the 360’s tessellator isn’t DX11 standard, just like the HD series tesselators, so unless the developer specifically codes for it, tessellation isn’t going to happen.
(please correct me if I’m wrong)
#30 by wpeltola - June 9th, 2009 at 09:08
I’m sure getting excited about DX11!! Great blog post Richard.
- Bill
#31 by Rui - June 9th, 2009 at 20:20
RV840 Evergreen, 40nm, 1600SP, 7GHz GDDR5
I got this info from Chiphell, can you confirm it?
#32 by Richard Huddy - June 25th, 2009 at 06:20
Rui,
“No”.
RichardH
p.s. I assume you didn’t really expect me to confirm anything like that – did you?
#33 by Hun73r - June 13th, 2009 at 13:35
why get exited over DX11 when most new games a still made with dx9
#34 by mark` - June 14th, 2009 at 17:22
all i care about is OpenCL, i can’t get tied down to a windows only thing.
i need my app to run on linux/osx and windows, Directx11 is just an old world Microsoft api (tying u down to their platform).
i don’t want that.
and hun73r games will run on DX9 and DX11, for games it’s not such a big deal (as the tesselator function is also available trough OpenGL already).
once Microsoft brings DX11 to OS X and Linux and everywhere else, i am the first person to praise it to heaven (until then, it stinks).
#35 by Richard Huddy - June 25th, 2009 at 06:25
Mark,
If all you care about is OpenCL then you’re going to be a very happy man indeed.
Realistically we know that the majority of games players that we want to reach are playing on PCs running one version of Windows or another. That’s why we focus there first – but our OpenCL driver is also well underway – so like I said, I think you can start singing the praises of this next generation of hardware pretty soon.
RichardH
#36 by Omar - June 15th, 2009 at 12:27
Will all these great improvments along with directx 11 work on my (HD 4670 1GB DDR3) graphics car ?
#37 by Ricardo - June 17th, 2009 at 18:53
What Benefits for my HD4850????????
It´s my HD4850 gain in performance?
It’s my HD4850 finally use tessellator unit?
It’s my HD4850 more efficient at using the horsepower present in multiple CPU cores with DirectX 11 ?
Thank’s!
#38 by Richard Huddy - June 25th, 2009 at 06:29
Omar and Ricardo,
The main benefit you’ll see when games developers start to ship DirectX 11 games will be that they will be able to make more efficient use of your CPU. That should help noticeably unless you run at super high resolutions where your GPU is already maxed out. But, yes, your HD4850 and HD4870 cards will both see benefits from running games which are designed for DirectX 11 (I’m assuming here that you’re running on Windows Vista or Win 7).
RichardH
#39 by Brandon - June 19th, 2009 at 15:42
We need less console ports on the PC. It needs to stop. We can tell when a game was ported to the PC as a second thought. I hate it.
#40 by Tee - June 24th, 2009 at 03:46
Though I am a die hard AMD fan for past 14 years, i’m not a blindly following one. I’m a bit skeptical of the supposed leaps in framerates. Obviously I welcome advances like the next guy, but what with Direct X and programmers’ past track record, hmmm.. Most new features either don’t get implimented in latest games or we have to wait a while till they do. And if they do, they’re not as impressive as the PR guys make out. So if AMD and Microsoft say we be getting better quality and framerates, create a demo and show us all.
Also as I have a HD4870 card, what features would my card not be able to utilise under DX11?
#41 by KevinC - June 26th, 2009 at 21:30
When can we expect Directx 11 cards from ATI to be released??
#42 by Richard Huddy - July 15th, 2009 at 10:36
Kevin,
AMD has made a public statement that we’ll deliver DX11 graphics into the market this year (2009).
Technically I’m probably not suppoosed to clarify that further, but I’ll go out on a limb and say there’s no way that means December 31st.
This transition is going to be one of the 4 most important transitions in graphics this decade (in 2002 we introduced DX9, 2004 saw PCIe, 2006 DX10 and now in 2009 we get DX11). We’re laser-focussed on hitting this transition as well as any company possibly could.
RichardH
#43 by GiGaByTe - July 7th, 2009 at 16:22
I can’t wait for DX11 but i have an problem i really need to buy a card and if buy a dx10.1 card will i have dx11 support,i mean what kind of features i will not be able to access ?and will i see a difference when using Win7/DX11 ?
#44 by Richard Huddy - July 16th, 2009 at 05:39
GiGaByTe,
Well, I’m glad to hear that you share our enthusiasm for DirectX 11 – I genuinely believe that it’s going to invigorate PC gaming for quite a few reasons.
But, yes, if you need to buy a card now then you’ll have to get something from the current line-ups.
You mention a DirectX 10.1 card – and that’s the very best place to start. For over a year AMD has been shipping DirectX 10.1 hardware, and the latest range (the HD4000 series) is showing plenty of benefits to DirectX 10.1 over previous generations of DirectX.
If you buy a DirectX 10.1 card then you can certainly use it with Windows 7 or Windows Vista, and it’s great news that it can run things like the Compute Shader (technically it will “meet the CS4.1 spec”).
The stuff you’ll miss out on will be Compute Shader 5.0, Tessellation and any of the other DX11-specific features which are based on the extended functionality of DIrectX 11.
The main gain that you’ll get on that card will be from using the DirectX 11 runtime (from Microsoft) and DirectX 11 drivers (from AMD). When you do that (which requires a DirectX 11 game) then you can often expect to see significant benefits in frame rates because those games will be designed to use the CPU more efficiently.
Maybe here I should summarize?
If you plan to play games on Windows XP then you can pretty safely stick with the DirectX 10.1 hardware.
If you are a serious PC enthusiast like me and you plan to replace your card within 6 months or so then buying a high-end DirectX 10.1 card now makes good sense. I recommend the HD4890 which is perfect for high resolution full-on gaming. It’s the very pinnacle of gaming now and even by early 2010 it’ll still make for an awesome system.
If you want to enjoy the very best from DirectX 11 games as soon as they arrive then you will have to switch to a DirectX 11 card at that time. [You might even consider upgrading to CrossFire for the interim to keep your system fully charged...]
And for those sceptics who are convinced that I’m a “blue eyed maketing guy” I’d suggest that the HD4890 is the best purchase. If you think that DIrectX 11 is all just hype then sit back and enjoy the terrific goodness that’s in our current high end GPUs. [But, (a) I don't have blue eyes, (b) I'm not a marketing type, I'm a techie at heart, and (c) DirectX 11 games really will arrive this year, and they really will look astonishingly real.
]
RichardH
#45 by Facundo - July 7th, 2009 at 23:36
HI, what would happen with the dx 10.1 cards , i mean, i have to build a new system and im near to buy a 4890 toxic card, but after seeing this, it seems that a huge change would happen with new cards, so whats your advice? I`ve been waiting during months for the best and when finally im going to buy this appear :’(
#46 by Doron - July 17th, 2009 at 18:26
@Facundo, It will be unwise to buy that card and not wait for the dx11 cards, which will probably appear in October along with Windows 7. Then you’ll see if there’s such a huge difference, and if there’s not I say just get the 4890..
#47 by Lonnie May - July 11th, 2009 at 04:35
I have been a hard fan of AMD and the information provided in the article is so useful for me. Thanks for sharing this valuable info.
Thanks,
#48 by cybercore - July 17th, 2009 at 11:49
I have read this article carefully, do I understand right that ATI 4800’s will get performance boost due to having DirectX 10.1 as integral part of DirectX 11 ?
Thank you.
#49 by Karthik.K - July 17th, 2009 at 15:42
hi there,
im a big fan of AMD.
i have a question.
im planning to buy 4890 , purchasing card (4890) is worth or wait for direct X 11 cards where i should get more performance.
need help..
also i have a small suggestion for AMD.
Intel they are making processors and they are number 1 and i want you guys to show that we also can make better procs with cheaper price.please AMD come with a new proc which should beat all other proc (i7 920,965,975 extreme edition).
please do that ASAP…
please because im planning to upgrade to latest proce from athlon X2 6000+…
#50 by Doron - July 18th, 2009 at 09:59
What about triple buffering? Will it finally be available this upcoming directx version?
#51 by Richard Huddy - August 6th, 2009 at 05:42
Doron,
Triple buffering has been possible since at least DirectX 5 – but it tends to produce little or no real benefit in performance. Adding a single extra buffer over and above double buffering only helps when you have highly variable frame generation times (after all if the game engine can steadily run 1 frame ahead then it can probably 2 frames ahead, so the bottleneck must still be the GPU). Plus it uses up a large amount of extra memory.
The best analog for effective triple buffering is, I believe, CrossFire. By queueing up work for multiple GPUs you take a situation where the GPU was the bottleneck and aim to halve (or better) the workload.
For an enthusiast machine this is the ultimate solution! And I can tell you that CrossFire on DX11 hardware rocks!
Richard “7 of 5″ Huddy
#52 by Rando - July 19th, 2009 at 05:23
Facundo w8 until dx11 cards coming out…. maybe end of year 2009….. i brought hd4870×2 and this is not so good for dx 11… i thinck i gonna need hd 5000 series soon…
#53 by Ricardo - July 19th, 2009 at 17:40
For Richard Huddy,
My HD4850 have tessellation 3.0, and it´s work´s in games DirectX 11?
It´s fair than tessellation works in HD3000 and HD4000 séries in DirectX 11, right?
I don´t By a new card for tessellation, but I have it!
Thanks
#54 by Rando - July 22nd, 2009 at 05:54
To Richard Huddy,
If i using quad-core(intel q9550) cpu and hd4870×2 then the dx11 gives some performance and better visual effects??
#55 by Richard Huddy - September 16th, 2009 at 07:05
Rando,
Using a quad core CPU (which ever one you choose) will a good way to get great performance from DirectX11 games. But if you want the very best visual quality then you will also need DirectX 11 hardware.
#56 by Maoltuile - July 24th, 2009 at 06:43
heh probably not, because i believe the 360’s tessellator isn’t DX11 standard, just like the HD series tesselators, so unless the developer specifically codes for it, tessellation isn’t going to happen.
So, the tesselation unit included in the 4xxx’s (and promoted to hell by AMD) basically does not, and never will, do anything? It’s more than a little annoying to hear this as someone who bought a 4870.
#57 by Ink cartridges - July 28th, 2009 at 05:02
The author does a great job of arranging this vast body of knowledge into one blog. I do agree w/the other reviewers on that point.
#58 by Kristian - August 15th, 2009 at 06:08
An interesting overview, thanks. It will be interesting seeing this cards out in the wild and how they actually perform.
You mentioned that DX11 exposes the GPU at a more flexible level, should I read into this that DX11 is the preferred / optimal way to harness this power in non visual programming (computational fluid dynamics) and such – or is OpenCL still the way to go?
#59 by Richard Huddy - September 16th, 2009 at 07:13
Kristian,
I guess I don’t think there’s much to drive you either way on the choice between OpenCL and DIrectX. If you’re coding in DirectX then DirectCompute is the obvious choice. If you’re running OpenGL or not using the graphics pipeline at all then you may prefer OpenCL.
For AMD we’re committed to supporting both of these open standards, and I’d positively encourage you to explore either option – which ever suits your needs best. But please don’t waste your time on proprietary standards – that’s just a dead-end when there are perfectly good standards with great support as an alternative.
RichardH
#60 by Armand - August 17th, 2009 at 16:06
Is there going to be a port of DirectX 11 to linux seeing as it requires special drivers to use certain hardware features of the video card?
#61 by Gnosis - August 27th, 2009 at 08:55
Now all we need is a playable tech-demo for dx11 that should include both urban areas and jungle/shore area a´la Crysis…Not to mention that if this really is going to improve graphics, physics and cpu performance as drastically as claimed, usage of it should be made as a standard at the gaming industry.
And while we are at it, lets categorise all major graphics styles used in modern games and slam a commonly used, required standard for all the categories in order to make sure that we really get what we are promised and paying for.
Demos that i have seen so far about dx.11 are very compelling, but please do remember how it all turned out with dx.10 and its fantastic new graphical capabilities and performance boost it was supposed to offer. After all we have seen only tech-demos and sadly thats all they are.
Even if this new generation of gpu´s would manage to offer everything that engineers and marketing sections are promising for us, it does NOT mean that gamestudios around the globe would start to support it any better than dx.10 was/is supported right now.
All in all, i´m very sceptic about this until i see atleast couple of high end games hitting the shelfs and reaching high scores at reviews…Hopefully more people would do the same, theres no point in tossing out our money for anyone, despite how intriguing promises they make, atleast until we see some decent results. This way we wouldn´t support nonsense products sold solely based on fictional capabilities empty promises.
#62 by Boris - August 29th, 2009 at 22:10
Richard Huddy, thank you for the blog and clarifying many things for me and others.
Will DirectX be the end of Stream vs CUDA question for people who want to use a video card not just for games but for other applications or we will have to wait for OpenCL or something?
Will the new generation of GPU be more power hungry, heat up to 100+ C, and make the cooler sound like a turbo jet?
Why can’t AMD/ATI enable all DirectX11 features in its 4800 or even earlier cards by updating BIOS and/or drivers?
If even latest AMD/ATI video cards do not fully support DirectX 11 it does not make sense to buy a new expensive card now because as soon as “DirectX 11 compliant” video cards appear on the market the price of older (now latest) cards will dramatically drop as most folks will be looking for DirectX 11 card. Even though it will take a long time for software to adopt DirectX 11 everybody will be looking for “future proof” hardware.
I am in the process of building a new system for myself on i7 (sorry AMD) and wanted to buy a 4850 card (the primary purpose of the computer is HD video editing) with a quiet cooling system. But now spending $100+ for a new card feels like a waste. Anyway I will probably still go for 4850 as I am not a gamer and hope the video system performance will be sufficient for me for at least 3 years.
I still have ATI All-in-Wonder card but it is an AGP card and useless for new platforms.
#63 by Richard Huddy - September 16th, 2009 at 09:48
Boris,
>Richard Huddy, thank you for the blog and clarifying many things for me and others.
You’re welcome – thanks for taking the time to read my blog.
>Will DirectX be the end of Stream vs CUDA question for people who want to use a video card not just for games but for other applications or we will have to wait for OpenCL or something?
Well, yes, I think it will be the end of proprietary APIs etc (so, yes, that includes CUDA). There’s simply no good reason to use a proprietary API which locks you in to one vendor’s hardware when there’s a good solid well supported alternative based upon open standards.
>Will the new generation of GPU be more power hungry, heat up to 100+ C, and make the cooler sound like a turbo jet?
No. If you want you’ll be able to choose a card which consumes less power and runs quieter than what you presently have. But that decision is always a trade-off where you decide how much horse-power you want and how noisy or power-hungry you’re willing to be. We give you the opportunity to choose, and the actual choice is yours…
>Why can’t AMD/ATI enable all DirectX11 features in its 4800 or even earlier cards by updating BIOS and/or drivers?
That’s simple. DirectX 11 has capabilities (like “DX11 Tessellation” and “Shader Model 5″) which simply aren’t supported by our previous hardware. There’s no way to fake these things up in the driver – you need real DirectX 11 hardware to get these capabilities.
>If even latest AMD/ATI video cards do not fully support DirectX 11 it does not make sense to buy a new expensive card now because as soon as “DirectX 11 compliant” video cards appear on the market the price of older (now latest) cards will dramatically drop as most folks will be looking for DirectX 11 card. Even though it will take a long time for software to adopt DirectX 11 everybody will be looking for “future proof” hardware.
Well, again, that’s a choice you’re free to make. We’re offering some stunning value on our HD4800 series at present so those can be great choices, but, yes, if you want the world’s best experience on Windows 7 and DirectX 11 then you might do well to wait a little longer!
>I am in the process of building a new system for myself on i7 (sorry AMD) and wanted to buy a 4850 card (the primary purpose of the computer is HD video editing) with a quiet cooling system. But now spending $100+ for a new card feels like a waste. Anyway I will probably still go for 4850 as I am not a gamer and hope the video system performance will be sufficient for me for at least 3 years.
The HD4850 is a great choice – it’s what I use in my home machine. Great for games, very reasonable power and noise levels, and it supports DirectX 10.1 which helps with quite a few of the best games from 2009.
>I still have ATI All-in-Wonder card but it is an AGP card and useless for new platforms.
Agreed. For AGP users it’s a great card, but for most of us it’s a little dated now.
>Richard Huddy, thank you for the blog and clarifying many things for me and others.
You’re welcome. And my thanks to you for taking the time to put together some interesting questions on the subject…
Thanks,
RichardH
#64 by Ink Cartridges - September 4th, 2009 at 13:57
I made the switch from nVidia to ATI about 6 years ago and have never looked back. I always felt that ATI always had superior image quality and has been on the edge of technological development.
Great job ATI, I’m a fan for life!
#65 by Richard Huddy - September 16th, 2009 at 07:08
Inky,
I personally made the switch from NVIDIA to ATI a little over 7 years ago and I agree that you and I both made the right choice. And when it comes to raising the bar on image quality you’ll find our new DirectX 11 hardware to be utterly awesome. I’ve been very impressed by both the numerous tech demos I’ve seen which show individual features off, and by teh games which are coming.
Indeed, if you like the quality of our pixels then you’ll love Eyefinity. Running 3 or more displays at the same time is soooooo sweet!
RichardH
#66 by Nforce - September 9th, 2009 at 19:23
am not really a fan of ATI but, i was planing on buying a ati 4870×2 card.
i want to buy this card but recenty i heard about the new upcoming dx11 Ati/nvidia gpu’s.
Each time i buy a new card the next few months,Ati/nvidia always seem to release a new card.
my only wish is that ati & nvidia stop making new cards every 8-10 months.
i am a person who cant resist new Gpu’s and always see myself buying a new 1.
should i wait for the new cards to arrive for dx11 or should i go for the 4870×2 from ATi?
#67 by Ian McNaughton - September 10th, 2009 at 09:36
My recommendation has to be based on budget – but given that I do not know your budget or which types of games you play – the best bang for the buck GPU on the market from any vendor is the ATI Radeon HD 4770…. I suggest that card…
#68 by Dominic - September 18th, 2009 at 09:49
Im very exited about getting my hands on one of these cards with DX11. The thing that worries me is a i currently have a 4870 and it is a fantastic card. But when the new cards come out i don’t want to have to sell it for a huge loss or just ditch it all together. I would like to have it as a dedicated Physics processing unit. Will i be able to do something like this with a 4870 and 5870?
http://ati.amd.com/technology/crossfire/physics/index.html
Im thinking of the 1+1 config.