I've got an XP3 rig and looking to upgrade from an NVidia 8600 GT GPU. While the newer PCIe 2 cards will run on the PCIe 1 slots, they generally have DX 11 capability. XP will only run DX 9, wondering how much you lose running a newer card on DX9.
Wonder if I should just stick to older cards that were designed under DX9, or will I still see an improvement running a newer card that's DX11 capable?
Not a hardcore gamer, don't want to invest in a newer O/S - just want a better experience with my older system than I'm getting with my current GPU but don't want to waste money on tech I won't be able to access.
Thoughts, advice?
Thanks
http://techgage.com/article/lost_planet_2_dx9_vs_dx11/
It eats up some frame rate. It would have helped, if
they could also have shown processor utilization. In some
cases, a more advanced DX version, uses more CPU. If
you're CPU starved to begin with, then using the lower
DX may help make the game playable. (And this was true,
even back in DX7 days.)
http://techgage.com/article/lost_planet_2_dx9_vs_dx11/2
As to what the features actually are, I don't bother
researching them, unless I can see them
The nice thing, in a typical game, is the ability to
adjust the level of detail, until you can actually use
the thing. If you crank a typical game to a high level
of detail, the frame rate is unusable. And that's on purpose.
The idea being, as time passes, hardware becomes more capable,
and you can "turn the knob" higher. That was an
objective, when Microsoft did their last flight
simulator.
*******
Some of the differences between how the OSes do things,
are described here. By this driver framework having
support for DX 9, means a game can work with a number
of different Windows versions. (It means, if you update
to a more recent OS, you can still use DX9 if there is
a preference allowing its selection. The driver has
a flavor of DX 9 for backward compatibility.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Display_Driver_Model
I'm all for new visual effects, if they add to game play.
But I can't say I've seen many lately that blew me away.
Antialiasing maybe. HDR sucked. PhysX, the demos were
pretty cheesy, and more to highlight processing power,
than what new effects could be achieved. And as a result,
I just don't get too excited when they claim to have
added a new effect. The addition of GPGPU computing
is interesting, but even that hasn't really wowed me
(as it's damn hard to speed up a lot of algorithms -
very few algorithms scale nicely). I'd be more
likely to buy a new video card for GPGPU, than for DX11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhysX
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_rendering
For any of those effects that "add a few warts to a Boss",
I say "well, you could have just stuck a few extra warts on
with DX9"
In other words, I bet if the person doing the
DX9 version took a look at how the DX11 version looked,
they could tweak the DX9 to look more similar to it. As
far as I'm concerned, the DX11 version looks different,
so you can justify the money spent on the card.
Paul
