| vux984 said: "That's all well and good, but the point of buying a high end graphics card is to enjoy games." A) Perhaps at the 'high end', but a lot of people buy a midrange card (say $180-$280) so that their desktop runs at a reasonable clip. Especially in Vista, which uses hardware acceleration heavily if its available, and do that properly it needs directx10 and a directx10 card. B)A directx9 card in vista might play games well enough in vista, but its a seriously weakened experience in vista overall. GPU multitasking is crucial for an optimal accelerated desktop experience. c)And to the guy who said "It also doesn't help that things like the "very high" settings in the crysis demo can be enabled in xp by tweaking config files - forcing many to wonder "then what is directx 10 for?" directx10 is for: 1) gpu multitasking and virtual gpu memory - letting you have a complete accelerated desktop experience in Vista. While it doesn't affect games much, affects the whole desktop experience though, because the rest of the desktop doesn't run like a dog in labour while you've got an accelerated application running. 2) support for the drm bullshit foisted on us by the media industry which enables bluray/hddvd playback on Vista. whether its a good thing or not is your choice, but that is an significant part of directx10. 3) a couple minor new graphics features. woo. 4) the end of capability bits. a directx10 card must do everything in the directx spec. this is mostly a feature for developers because now they don't have to worry about using a directx9 feature only to find out a significant number of directx9 cards can't actually do it. |
A) Most people don't really want extremely flashy desktops that take a lot of GPU "oomph" to do. They want simple and functional and when and only when the graphical flair provides simple and/or functional should it be used. This idea of video card purchase just to make your desktop work is insanity.
Oh and $180-$280 is a high end video card for 98% of people. Only well-off and extreme hardcore gamers people purchase one or more of the $500 cards, because people know that the price isn't worth it and it WILL come down. To most consumers a high end video card is the $300 range, mid range is more like $90-$200 and low end is basically as cheap as you can find to about $90 again. I build PCs for all sorts of people and these are the types of price ranges I see.
B) How is the experience seriously weakened? Because to the end consumer who knows what looks good and what doesn't people see that if they play DX9 it runs smoother and looks practically identical. In DX10 it runs slower and ...looks practically identical. You can say it is a "seriously weakened experience" as many times as you like but until that matches up with the real world for the consumer they aren't going to care 2 craps about what you or MS say about DX10 and how amazing it is.
C1) Again, the desktop should not be a GPU taxing application. This idea that you have about needing DX10 for the desktop is completely out of sync with what normal people want. I gauruntee you that nobody is spending a few hundred on video card with DX10.x compliance just to get a few extra nifty effects for their desktop. People don't want to pay for this stuff. (edit: in bold)
C2) Once again I think you will find most people don't want this, you seem to realize that though so I am glad we are on the same page for this one. DRM is a great theory but the implementations of it to date have been atrocious.
C3) This is what most people think of DX10 and it is why its hard for them to justify the upgrades necessary to utilize it.
C4) This is a practical feature....for developers. You will find that most consumers won't upgrade for this reason alone and probably feel that they aren't going to shell out extra cash to help wipe away the poor forward thinking of the industry. No worries in a couple of years most of these folks will upgrade on their own schedule and life will be good...but it still isn't a compelling reason for consumers to upgrade.
Sumarizing my points, CONSUMERS have very little if any reason currently to upgrade to DX10 and imo for gamers DX10 represented the biggest attraction for Vista in general. Personally I am looking forward to reading more about Windows Vienna (Windows 7) etc...because I think it is likely that MS will see that things like full 64-bit support (drivers and all, as well as not requiring digitally signed drivers) is more of a draw than gimmicks like DX10 are. And yes, to the consumer DX10 is nothing more than a gimmick right now...you can argue that it has purpose all you like but unless that purpose directly impacts the end user experience in a way they can discern they don't care and rightfuly so.
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