Since the vast majority of gamers today still use Windows XP operating system (OS) and cannot take advantage of DirectX 10 application programming interface, Valve Software believes that it hardly makes sense to jump on the DirectX 10 bandwagon just now, as certain DX10 hardware capabilities can be used even in DirectX 9 environment.
According to statistics from Valve’s Steam software distribution system, there are about 8% of gamers who use Microsoft Windows Vista operating system and 90% of those who utilize Windows XP OS. Meanwhile, over 11% of computers with Steam installed are equipped with a DirectX 10-compatible graphics processing unit, though, this does not guarantee that they use Windows Vista: only about 2.31% of users have a combination of a DirectX 10 GPU and Windows Vista.
“There are far more customers with DX10 hardware running on Windows XP than Windows Vista. If you’re going to try to take advantage of that hardware, your customers are telling you, make sure it works on DX9 API,” said Gabe Newell, the founder and managing director of Valve Software, in an interview with Game Informer web-site.
This is not the first time when a major game developer indicates lukewarm attitude towards DirectX 10. Earlier this year John Carmack of id Software said he would not "jump" on the DirectX 10 hardware immediately. Other game developers are also not leapfrogging to DirectX 10 mainly because two most advanced game consoles available today – Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 – are equipped with graphics chips which feature-set resembles that of DirectX 9 shader model 3.0, therefore, it is easier to develop new titles with similar graphics features in mind.
“Right now with the flexibility of DX9, we can take advantage of DX10 hardware functionality through DX9. For example, the tesselator in ATI’s [Radeon HD 2000] hardware is super valuable and we can get to it through DX9, so that’s probably a better investment than going after a DX10 API,” Mr. Newell added.
Another strong reason for not utilizing DirectX 10 for titles that are coming in the next 12 months is because of generally poor performance of contemporary first-generation DirectX 10 graphics processors even in modern games that use some DirectX 10 features.
Comments currently: 10
Discussion started: 08/28/07 05:13:47 AM
Latest comment: 01/12/08 08:08:59 PM
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1.
But we also need companies striving to acheve new groundbraking tech inside their own nieche.
Valve has been very good at this in the past, so it still makes me a little dissapointed that some dx10 abillities werent added to EP2.
However also very glad that they still support SM2.0 though I only have x850xt.
[Posted by: hmmmm | Date: 08/28/07 05:13:47 AM]
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Don't worry. They are working on DX10 in their labs as I type. It's only a matter of time before they release it to the masses.
(Hopefully MS will bring DX10 to XP too.)
[Posted by: cheeseman | Date: 08/28/07 08:21:10 AM]
If MS brings DX 10 to XP, then their "Oh, DX 10 is too advanced for XP" goes up their ass and Apple makes another insipid commerical about MS.
XP may gain DX 10, but probably when DX 11 for Vista comes out. MS may even decide that XP will be supported until DX 12 or so, but only if Vista becomes a sucess. They aren't stupid. They know that most people would rather buy XP computers rather than Vista computers, and this DX 10 ploy will only force mass migration to Vista when games cannot run on XP due to DirectX not hardware. MS is turning into Apple computers. Apple has horrible application support. You need like the latest OS to run their programs. At least MS still has programs for Win95.
[Posted by: nuff | Date: 08/29/07 04:29:48 PM]
I prefer Linux than Vista. Sure Vista has pretty eye candy, but it needs improvement in security. The performance that Linux provides to games is a lot more than Windows can provide. Linux is capable of a handling hundreds of processors and several hundreds of gigabytes of RAM with out slowing down.
Game developers should enter into SDL programming because it provides a wider audience than DirectX. SDL combines OpenGL and OpenAL that works in a wide variety of operating systems. Also it is multi-threaded which is better for today's systems that now comes with 4+ processors.
It is ok for a company to stick with an old API until the hardware is mature for the new API. Though the company should not rest on the old API, but on the side learn the new API.
BTW, I was going to say terabytes of RAM, but Windows users will be jealous.
[Posted by: linuxnerd | Date: 08/30/07 12:54:43 AM]
2.
what morons, the reason everyone with DX10 hardware is still running XP is because there aren't any great DX10 titles out. Gamers are eagerly awaiting a true reason to upgrade to vista it just hasn't come along yet.
[Posted by: schwiz | Date: 08/28/07 08:41:14 AM]
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Of course, it has nothing to do with the fact that for cost of Windows Vista Ultimate I could buy a second 8800 GTS to run in SLI mode. Sure you could save money by getting vista basic or something. Oh, better yet save money buy buying an OEM version, but good luck if you need to change your motherboard. Yeah valve must be morons because if they released their Uber cool game in DX10 for windows Vista more people would buy into windows Vista even if they have perfectly good copy of XP which they currently play every other game they own.
Yeah valve must not no anything about publishing a title. They must be morons and need to follow your awesome wisdom. [ack too much sarcasm for one day ^_^]
[Posted by: Megamanx00 | Date: 08/28/07 09:51:29 AM]
Vista Home Premium is all that a gamer will ever need Vista Ultimate is pretty much a waste of money if you are buying your OS strictly for gaming.
[Posted by: schwiz | Date: 08/28/07 08:02:12 PM]
3.
I'm glad. It seems like the new graphic cards still don't run DX10 titles well and Nvidia is still having DX10 driver problems. At least enough that the crysis development team complained about them.
I see this as a smart move by Valve since in order to sell as many copies of the game as possible they need to appeal to as many gamers as possible. Also like they said the PS3 and 360 have more DX9 like capabilities, although the 360 has a unified shader set and only has 24-bit shaders, so it will be easier to port code than it would be if they started off in DX10.
Don't get me wrong I like the idea of DX10. DX9 had just gotten so big and bloated with commands and extensions. I mean really you have commands that haven't been used since some of the early games for Win 95!!! Starting over with a clean, well documented API (at least compared to the previous one) is a good move but that also means you will not be able to get DX10 on Windows XP. It has to do with the way both were designed so there is no benefit to Microsoft to go through all the trouble of supporting DX10 on XP, especially when they are trying to get people to move to VISTA.
[Posted by: Megamanx00 | Date: 08/28/07 10:10:38 AM]
4.
Valve doesn't seem to have DX9 figured out yet.
The HalfLife Source engine freezes with sound looping on many systems. Their forums have 10s of thousands of hits related to this problem, they have yet to fix the problem.
[Posted by: Wayne | Date: 08/31/07 04:55:15 AM]
5.
If only valve wasn't so biased for ATi and actually made their games worthy of playing on an Nvidia card. All the games are waaaay optimized for ATi cards and practically unoptimized to death for Nvidia cards.
[Posted by: winner | Date: 01/12/08 08:08:59 PM]
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