AMD’s newfound zest for life has made it look for what would really, really hurt the competition. The answer? the game developers. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but Blizzard has grown pretty big these days. World of WarCraft has been an indescribable success. It’s been known for a while that Blizzard has been looking at implementing DirectX 10.1 with one of its future games. The fact is that it’s more than one, or two.
If AMD has played its cards right, Blizzard is not only looking to implement DX10.1 support, and in best-AMD-case scenario, DX10.1-exclusive effects, with future games, but also patch current games with DX10.1 for additional performance and effects. If everything comes together for AMD, this means that StarCraft 2, Diablo 3, future World of WarCraft add-ons, and more games from Blizzard will sport DX10.1, something which NVIDIA is unable to handle hardware-wise.
That’s not all though. We recently learned that AMD is looking to team up with more developers, and if there’s one engine that has loved ATI hardware for a long time, it’s the Valve Source engine. ATI is apparently hoping to ensnare Valve as well, and have DX10.1 support with future games like Half-Life 2: Episode 3, Left 4 Dead, Portal 2 and the rest. Knowing how flexible the Source engine is, we wouldn’t be surprised if current games would be patched to further boost performance and additional effects through DX10.1.
Game developers have a tendency to play it safe though, and whether there will be any exclusive effects or not remains to be seen. We see no reason for why they shouldn’t implement DirectX 10.1 though, the worst that can happen is that people with compliant hardware will get a performance boost where DX10.1 makes a difference over DX10.0.
Source: nordichardware.com
the real question is…
how many % of players/users are using DX10?
(people are still using window XP, since Vista is still crap….)
left alone DX10.1, the % of players/users are almost insignificant, i am not saying 0 or none
but most users/players are still using DX9
unless Window 7 or the next OS come out soon, no one really wanted Vista (but i am using Vista).
Well the problem is people cannot handle Windows vista and don’t know how to use it, tweak it and Repair it..So Vista is not Crap….User may be :D
Why should a user know how to tweak, fix, repair Vista? Shouldn’t an operating system work as it is advertised to? Why should the user have to spend hours fixing something they just bought?
I don’t hate Vista and I’m not against it… But you’re comment about users being crap and not knowing how to fix an OS made me say it…
What special stuff does the Dx10.1 hold that Dx10 doesn’t? very little. So nVidia will be never left far behind. It might be a question of merely a series or 2 of graphics card (that’s like 1 year)and nV will catch up again.
This is not the right way of beating the green behemoth. ATi has hurt nV with 4870 in the right place. With their less than half priced product competing with likes of GTX280&260.
This is the correct way to do it..
If all this does happen with these games, trust me that nvidia will find a way to support 10.1, nvidia is the best card on the market imo
after the previous ati products I have purchased I will never buy more even if they do become ‘slightly’ superior for a while.
Yeah it would seem dumb for ANY developer to forsake nVidia. I haven’t even considered an ATI card for several generations. I think I have one in a dusty box somewhere. Point being is that they would pointlessly lose their customers in order to gain customers?
I have never had a problem with ATI starting from the rage pro and up. the only nag is the driver size but thats will all windows drivers.I use windows and linux both and use the newest cards in windows to play games until the next generation when linux supports the old and windows wants the new. But at @2 you made me LOL so a OS should come with a tweak and fix guide? or is this for the end user to figure out the hard way (after a reinstall, virus infestation, total system crash? what was your time to learn this)its obvious that the only reason to have vista is DX 10 but that might even go away with MS’s decision to support XP until 2012. If MS was a decent company they would port DX10 to XP so the real users can play games and not have to go though the cycle of tweak repair fix update tweak over and over with vista. i mean supporting a OS for 4 years without a good improvement? o yea SP3 but i didnt even notice the changes until i got a list of them.
Blizzard already said that starcraft 2 and diablo 3 will be dx9 games and wow will certainly never be a dx10 game :)
Actually, Blizzard has stated that Diablo 3 “will” be a DX10 game. They have not made any statements on DX10.1. They have also made no statements on Starcraft 2 other than the fact that they are working on it. Want proof about D3, check out http://www.blizzard.com, don’t click on “continue to blizzard.com” and enter the D3 flash page. There’s a 20 minute gameplay video in which the developer stated tech. specs.
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