ATI 9800 Pro compatibility Question

[Caveman]

About to buy one used for an older rig... Noticed that it is advertised as not supporting directX9.0c

I assume this means I can still use SP2 (9.0c), but that 9.0C games won't work... Correct?

 

[Lord Evermore]

9.0c games ought to still work. The only issue is that any features that are only provided by 9.0c won't work. Games should be able to fall back to an older feature-set. The main reason the new version of DX is still required is just because of what code the game expects to find, what files, what API hooks, etc., which changes between versions. They still provide the same features as DX9a or b, as well as c, but how they're accessed changes a bit. Since they want to write for the latest version they can, without also having to write it to be able to handle all the older versions, they just require the new version.

 

[AlgaeEater]

It's highly relative to the particular game in question, but the games should work unless specifically specified in their minimum requirements.

According to This Helpful Video Card Website Database the 9800 Pro has these specs:

Noise Level: Quiet
Framebuffer: 128,256 MB
Memory Type: DDR
Memory Bus Type: 64x4 (256 bit)
DirectX Compliance: 9.0
OpenGL Compliance: 2.0
PS Version: 2.0
VS Version: 2.0
Process: 150 nm
Fragment Pipelines: 8
Vertex Pipelines: 4
Texture Units: 8
Raster Operators 8

I think the most important thing to note on video cards is their PS and VS versions, since those dramatically affect performance and sometimes stability in games. Granted you're not obviously looking for performance using an older card, but sometimes you can't even load a game properly without the minimum PS or VS version requirements.

 

[oynaz]

My 9800 Pro works just fine. The newest games I have tried are Dark Messiah and Neverwinter Knights 2.

 

[biostud]

it just mean that your videocard does not support the newest features available in DX9.0c (SM 3.0 support), and instead use the one supported by your card.