"Steve" wrote in message
...
Hi,
I'll be ordering a system with the ATI All-in-Wonder 9000 Pro
(http://www.ati.com/products/radeon90...pro/index.html). I like the
card because it is relatively cheap, has on screen TV viewing capability,
and
enough memory (64 MB) to drive the somewhat low-fi games I plan on using
(Sim
City 4000, Age of Empires) but I am worried because it only states having
DirectX 8.1 capability. Is this something I should worry about or is
DirectX 9
not an issue for most users? I do plan on doing some basic home video
editing
if that is an issue.
Thanks for the help, Steve.

AOE (and Morrowind and GPL) are my favourites and my 9000 Pro handles them
just fine.

I suspect that the DX issue is a marketing ploy to get us to buy the latest
(and most expensive) - There is even one little game that _requires_ DX9 to
run
http://www.spiritedtechnology.com/pokemonpc.htm
and that is entirely happy running on this (only) DX8 compatible card.

Maybe I'll be locked out of the latest and most demanding software in 2-3
years, but I'm sure other aspects of pc hardware will have changed as well
by then.
Eg AGP cards will be obsolete, you gotta have UltraGP graphics cards,
running on 0.5 volts (But will the games really be better, i wonder?).

Video-editing - be careful about taking marketing at face value - I never
got Pinnacle Studio 8 (ATI version) to capture at all from the ATI card it
was bundled with, and even if import a previously saved file I found it
hopelessly laborious for video editing. Much prefer to use totally free
TMPGEnc http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html

HTH,

Laurence