DirectX gaming support question

[Charles Kozierok]

I'm not a heavy-duty gamer but I'm building a low-to-mid-level machine for my son and trying to avoid potential issues he may come up with over time. So, a couple of questions for you gaming experts...

1. Am I likely to be okay with a DX10.1 card? From what I can tell, there are only a couple of games that require DX11. Is that likely to change over the next couple of years to the point that I'll end up having to buy a DX11 card?

2. There seem to be a number of games that require either DX11 or DX9.0c. Will a DX10.x card also run DX9.0c?

Thanks.

 

[ViRGE]

1) There's a good chance that a DX10.1 card will come up short. The baseline for multi-platform titles is going to shift from DX9 hardware (360/PS3) to DX11 hardware (720/PS4) over the next year. Even with the easy backwards compatibility programming provisions in DirectX, devs may stick to a strict baseline here rather than spending time scaling down games for 4 year old cards.

2) A DX10 card will run DX9. Newer hardware always runs older software.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Thanks ViRGE. I guess that's what I figured.. I better find a way to work a DX11 card into the budget then.

 

[cmdrdredd]

There are some great deals on the HD 7870 and HD 7850 lately.

 

[DooKey]

If you watch the FS section you can sometimes pick up a 7770 for under $85 shipped. You can't beat that for bang for the buck DX 11 card.