Does DirectX support depend on video card driver?

[jrichrds]

I often see video card drivers list "DirectX <insert a version> support"

Do my drivers have to officially support DirectX 9 before I get any benefit out of installing DirectX 9?

 

[Megatomic]

It's even deeper than the drivers from what I know. Modern video chips are physically designed for specific DirectX version compatibliity. For example:

GF2 supported DX7
GF3 supported DX8
GF4 supported DX8.1
GF FX will support DX9

When I was using my trusty old GF2 Pro I had DX8.1 installed along with the latest Detonator drivers yet I didn't have Pixel shaders and other DX8 features. This was most often evidenced when I ran 3DMark2001, my card couldn't complete all the tests.

So, to answer your question, installing the latest DirectX won't give you new features unless your card physically has those features. But installing the latest DirectX shouldn't hurt you either and it might even improve your overall stability by fixing bugs in the previous version of DirectX. FWIW, I have installed DX9 on my system with a GF4 Ti 4200 and it didn't break anything. My benchmark scores actually improved some too.

 

[jrichrds]

Interesting info, thanks! I have a GF4 too.

 

[sandorski]

I'm not very knowledgeable on such things, but it is possible that drivers for vidcards that don't support DirectX 9 may still(the drivers) use DirectX 9 features through software. I dunno if any do, but I've noticed some interesting improvements in performance and graphic details after updating to DirectX 9/Cat 3.0 with my Radeon 8500LE. Could be attributable to other things, such as resetting a dumb adjustment in a tweak proggyor the like though.

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: sandorski
I'm not very knowledgeable on such things, but it is possible that drivers for vidcards that don't support DirectX 9 may still(the drivers) use DirectX 9 features through software. I dunno if any do, but I've noticed some interesting improvements in performance and graphic details after updating to DirectX 9/Cat 3.0 with my Radeon 8500LE. Could be attributable to other things, such as resetting a dumb adjustment in a tweak proggyor the like though.

While I didn't see any improvements in graphic quality I did get increases in benchmark performance. For instance, my 3Dmark2001 score went up a little over 100 points (hehe) and my Comanche 4 demo benchmark score went up 2fps. The Comanche 4 score was the one that got my attention as it is a real benchmark. I tweaked my memory and overclocked my GF4 and only got 2fps so this was a big difference for me.