Worth waiting for dx11 cards?

[Scali]

Originally posted by: Kakkoii
Read the link I posted with that quote. Perhaps you quoted me just before I edited my message..

Oh god, more Richard Huddy marketing blurb 🙂
But if I understand his last sentence correctly, AMD is planning on releasing DX11 hardware at Windows 7 launch.

 

[Kakkoii]

Originally posted by: Scali

Originally posted by: Kakkoii
Read the link I posted with that quote. Perhaps you quoted me just before I edited my message..

Oh god, more Richard Huddy marketing blurb 🙂
But if I understand his last sentence correctly, AMD is planning on releasing DX11 hardware at Windows 7 launch.

Yeah, once you get to "On top of that there?s something worth mentioning here", your pretty much done the article haha. The rest is merely stroking AMD's ego, almost sounds like something you'd hear out of North Korea.

 

[Scali]

Originally posted by: Kakkoii
Yeah, once you get to "On top of that there?s something worth mentioning here", your pretty much done the article haha. The rest is merely stroking AMD's ego, almost sounds like something you'd hear out of North Korea.

Yea, I mean, the way he says "Right now, the closest thing to DX11 is DX10.1" was a bit pathetic... not to mention bringing up the tesselation in the XBox 360 GPU 🙂

I also think some parts are pretty exaggerated. Such as the new multithreaded rendering. I played around with that a bit, with the new DX11 SDK, and it has nowhere as much impact as Huddy wants you to believe.
Having said that, it's purely a software feature. Once the DX11 runtime and drivers are released, the multithreaded rendering features will be available to all DX10 and DX11 hardware on both Vista and Windows 7 (and even the later generations of DX9 hardware).

The GPGPU stuff is again mostly a software feature. All GeForce 8-series and up will support it, as will the Radeon 4000-series. Sure, with a full DX11 GPU you get more powerful compute shaders, but that is less significant than the enabling of GPGPU in general. And it's also more of a feature for AMD than for nVidia, because nVidia already has PhysX out, which leverages the GPGPU power of their hardware in games through Cuda. AMD never really got their Stream off the ground.

As for the tesselator... well, that's an interesting one actually. Namely, because you get these Compute Shaders on DX10-hardware, you don't specifically NEED a tesselator in hardware. You can now program your own (in fact, that's exactly what Intel is going to do with Larrabee anyway, and chances are that nVidia goes for a software-path aswell, rather than dedicated hardware).
So if you're going to put a hardware tesselator on your chip, it had better deliver performance. Something that didn't quite work with its predecessor in DX10, the geometry shader.

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: Scali

Originally posted by: akugami
There was a huge jump in terms of differences between DX9 and DX10. There is less of a jump between DX10 and DX11. Don't get me wrong, there are still some pretty major changes but at the same time there are more similarities than differences. DX11 is basically a superset of DX10.

That's a matter of perspective.
The API stays mostly the same. However, nVidia has mentioned that they're going from a SIMD architecture to a MIMD architecture.
That choice has little to do with the API, since DX11 could run fine on a SIMD architecture aswell. But it may give the next nVidia chip completely different performance characteristics (which aren't DX11-specific either, you'll see the same when running DX10 or DX9 games on the hardware).
So DX11 being a superset of DX10 doesn't necessarily mean that the underlying hardware stays the same.
Just like how DX9 software can run on DX10 hardware aswell, which is quite different from DX9 hardware, and usually more efficient.

Meant software wise. DX9 and DX10 were big changes but DX10 and DX11 were lesser changes. Not that there isn't going to be major hardware changes.

Interesting enough, nVidia, whose GPGPU efforts are ahead of ATI is likely to have a jump with DX11 improving multi-threading and GPGPU functions. ATI does have a slight edge with the hardware tesselator. As far as who is better in overall performance, who knows whose solution will be better.

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: Kakkoii

Originally posted by: akugami
ATI's DX11 demo at Computex 2009 was more in line with a tech demo. There was no working video card to my knowledge and was most likely a simulation of what to expect. There was a silicon wafer of the new ATI GPU's but AFAIK, no working video card. If you have info to the contrary please link.

They specifically state it's running on the first DX11 chip. And obviously the chip needs to be attached to a test card to run.
http://www.amd.com/us/press-re...s_first-2009jun03.aspx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eTngR6M37Q

It's interesting that none of the regular news channels have reported actually seeing a working video card, even if it's in an early engineering sample form. The AMD press release contains a lot of ambiguous statements that can mean it was running on a DX11 GPU but it can also be a simulation of DX11 features. If you've ever taken any marketing, even beginner courses they tell you a lot about how language can mislead the readers. What some would call "weasel claims" that specifically is meant to mislead without lying.

Now, I'm not saying there isn't an engineering sample of AMD's next video card out there. But an engineering sample might require a respin as they test it. Lest we forget, the X1900 was delayed by months. What would have been an early release advantage turned into a late to the party card. Though not bad performing AMD's gaffes allowed an almost uncontested nVidia dominance to this day after the strong showing by the Radeon 9x00 series.

Originally posted by: akugami
As far as my point and where I was going with that. You pretty much answered your own question. It's going to take time for DX11 games to show up and any game optimized for DX11 can easily be optimized for DX10 since they're practically the same thing.

I wasn't talking about optimizing the game for DX10 or 11, I was talking about the optimizations DX11 itself introduces.

Read this article:
http://blogs.amd.com/play/2009...ited-about-directx-11/[/quote]

If you optimize for DX11, except for DX11 specific features, you pretty much optimize for DX10 as well. Most of the DX11 changes center around GPGPU, hardware tesselation, and multi-threading. The rest of DX11, you might as well call DX10.

 

[Candymancan21]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Not for DX11 itself. The only reason to wait is if the current cards in your price range aren't enough of an upgrade to be worth it/

For example I have a 4870 512MB from last July that's still working well for the games I'm playing so there's no point in getting a 4890 despite the crazy low prices on it.

Unless you had a 4850 like i did, the 4850 is alot slower then the 4870 so the gain i saw going to a 4890 was about 80% improvement in fps, im talking low 40's to high 70's. Crysis went from low 20's to 40fps.


As for the Op i would say with a 8800GTS 320 i would get the 4890. I own a 8800GTS 640 and its a faster card then the 320 due to the frame buffer (more memory) and while the GTS is a great card still IMO anyway, the 4890 is like 3x faster. DX11 wont be here until what was it ? September or November something like that because thats the release date of windows 7 at least last i read. That means your going to have to wait 3-5 months before you see the new cards. When they come out your going to be sure they are going to be expensive. On top of that i doubt we will see any games for them until the 2nd revision of those cards come out.

Remember DX9 and DX10 ? The 8800GTS/X was released 2 years ago and we only have a handfull of games that really use DX10.

 

[Scali]

Originally posted by: Candymancan21
Remember DX9 and DX10 ? The 8800GTS/X was released 2 years ago and we only have a handfull of games that really use DX10.

That's a slightly different situation though...
For DX10 you not only required a new videocard, but also Windows Vista.
Especially among gamers, Vista wasn't very popular. According to the Steam Hardware Survey, the majority of people owning DX10 hardware still use XP and as such are not capable of running DX10 games in the first place.

DX11 will be available as an update to Vista, and DX11 also doesn't require DX11 hardware. It works with DX9/DX10 hardware aswell.
This means that it will have a larger installed base than DX10 had at the start, and it will be more compelling for developers to use DX11.

 

[Candymancan21]

Oh didnt know that, well i still think a 4890 is a good choice right now.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Scali

Originally posted by: Candymancan21
Remember DX9 and DX10 ? The 8800GTS/X was released 2 years ago and we only have a handfull of games that really use DX10.

That's a slightly different situation though...
For DX10 you not only required a new videocard, but also Windows Vista.
Especially among gamers, Vista wasn't very popular. According to the Steam Hardware Survey, the majority of people owning DX10 hardware still use XP and as such are not capable of running DX10 games in the first place.

DX11 will be available as an update to Vista, and DX11 also doesn't require DX11 hardware. It works with DX9/DX10 hardware aswell.
This means that it will have a larger installed base than DX10 had at the start, and it will be more compelling for developers to use DX11.

We still will not immediately see DX11 games. Even if the programmers had a year's head start [which is doubtful], it will be 2010 to see full DX11 games built from the ground up, as it were.
More like DX11 in 2011

upgrade now

 

[Scali]

Originally posted by: apoppin
We still will not immediately see DX11 games. Even if the programmers had a year's head start [which is doubtful]

They did, actually... more or less.
The November 2008 DirectX SDK contained the first DirectX 11 'tech preview'. This was updated again in March.
So developers have had access to DirectX 11 for quite a while. The ones participating in Microsoft's beta program have probably had access for well over a year.

 

[apoppin]

OK, so how long does it take to create a brand new game/engine ?

As i understand, if they rush it and know what they are doing and it goes really well, 2 years - mostly three.
- i am sure we will see some "patched in" DX11 also (so they can stick it on the box *DX11!!!* in tiny letter, "*tba later in a patch") - 18 months from the start of getting their *first* kit [which was alpha/raw beta]-

i seriously doubt we will see any DX11 in games this year
- lots of pretty tech demos 😛

So .. are we on for full DX11 games in the time frame of 2010/2011 - or not?

edited

 

[Scali]

Originally posted by: apoppin
OK, so how long does it take to create a brand new game/engine ?

Your assumption is wrong.
DX11 doesn't require you to write a brand new game/engine.
The API is mostly unchanged. With a bit of search & replace you can turn a DX10 engine into a DX11 one in just a few hours.

We saw the same thing when going from DX8 to DX9. Converting an engine didn't take too long, so DX9 engines arrived very quickly.
This time there's actually MORE incentive to go to DX11. Namely, DX11 also supports DX9 hardware. Currently many engines support both DX9 and DX10. When you move to DX11, you can drop the DX9 code, so your codebase will be smaller and easier to maintain.

 

[apoppin]

So i can quote you on saying that you think we will see DX11 games this year? 😛
:Q

i don't think so; i am saying the earliest is next year
--upgrade now is my advice; if you need it, why wait?

We saw the same thing when going from DX8 to DX9.

Well, then - that took a couple of years to make a transition .. i remember what a nasty resource hog DE-IW was and that the next game, Thief DS was vastly improved in every way with DX9.

The only thing that i believe that is sure, is that the new DX11 video cards will be more expensive and there won't be any DX11 games at launch.

 

[Scali]

Originally posted by: apoppin
So i can quote you on saying that you think we will see DX11 games this year? 😛
:Q

No, I'm just saying it's possible, because converting an engine from DX10 to DX11 isn't that much work.
Whether or not game developers will actually put in the work on games that are so close to release, I don't know. They could, if they wanted to. But especially with the way games are developed these days (aimed mainly at consoles etc), game developers seem pretty complacent. Look at Valve, still releasing new games on their aging DX9 Source engine.

It's irrelevant for a buying decision though, because a DX11 engine will run on DX10 hardware aswell. You don't need DX11 hardware to run the DX11 API.