When will I *need* a Directx 9 card?

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 18:52:21 +0200, Lynley James
wrote:

On 23 Nov 2003 12:27:35 -0800, (John) wrote:

Anybody know when you'll absolutely need a Directx 9 card to have any
fun with games? It seems that games like Halo and Max Payne 2 use
Directx 9 features sparingly, and therefore, it's no big deal if I
play them on my Directx 8.1 card (which is a GeForce 4 Ti 4200).

Are we talking 3-4 months maybe?

I'm just trying to get a handle on when to spend the bucks for an
upgrade.

thanks.

If you want all the eye candy, probably when Doom3 or Half-Life 2 is
finally released. I'm not sure when that will be, as IIRC HL2 has
been pushed back indefinitely and Doom3 never had a firm release date.
All D3 had was the vague 2004 date.

Will Doom3 become the next (shhhhhhhhhh) Daikatana?


Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkkkkkkkk!!!


--
Remember when real men used Real computers!?
When 512K of video RAM was a lot!

Death to Palladium & WPA!!

On 24 Nov 2003 13:19:08 -0800,
(Mean_Chlorine) wrote:

"Jago Illustration" wrote in message ...

Any idea what kind of visual improvement I'll see going from a Geforce 2MX
to a 5900 Ultra, in terms of what Halo will look like? It was quite playable
for the most part on the MX but not exactly pretty.

Not a lot - Halo isn't a game with particularly impressive graphics to
begin with, not least because it was designed to run on a GF4MX core
machine (XBox). It doesn't matter what hardware you throw at that
game, it'll never look terribly impressive.

XBox uses a GF3 core... not a GF2 core like the labled 4mx.

The GF4MX's are really little but souped up GF2 ultras; GF3's are
actually more advanced, feature-wise, than GF4MX's, as are of course
GF4Ti's.

GF4mx are updated GF2 cards, many had dual output built in... a
feature NOT built into GF2 and GF3 cards... But performance
freatures, they were faster running GF2, nothing more.

GF5-5200 are GF3 cards with dual output and DX9-Slide show built in.


--
Remember when real men used Real computers!?
When 512K of video RAM was a lot!

Death to Palladium & WPA!!

On 24 Nov 2003 17:34:17 -0800, (John) wrote:

wrote in message

I was trying to figure this out a couple of months ago. What someone
needs to do is take a few screenshots and record a few gameplay demo
movies to show off the differences between DX8 and DX9 hardware.

From what i've seen so far, there really isn't much visual difference
seen yet. That just means no game has made use of the DX9 hardware
enough to show a real difference. I've seen a few screenshots of
Halflife 2 that supposedly showed the differences. It was only
apparent in the way the water reflected images or obscured objects
underwater. There was a *slight* difference between dx8 and dx9
cards. But barely noticeable.


Yeah, I got that sense after playing Halo. I have a GeForce 4 Ti 4200
so I couldn't access the DX9 features in the game, yet it looked
practically identical to what I saw on the Xbox. This made me wonder
what, if anything, DX9 was really accomplishing.

HALO is a DX8 game... its sub-standard to UT2003. But its a fine
game. HALO looks a bit better on a DX9 card... but nothing you'd
really notice much. (Sun effects through trees - transpancies)

My understanding is that in Max Payne 2, DX9 only gives you reflective
mirrors and everything else looks the same as DX8.1.

But you can do "mirrors" with DX6 cards too... so whats the deal?


--
Remember when real men used Real computers!?
When 512K of video RAM was a lot!

Death to Palladium & WPA!!

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 02:03:03 GMT, "Max Longman"
wrote:

If you want to turn on FSAA and AF in any of the latest games, you
-will- need a -powerful- dx9 card, if only for the speed.

PLUS a powerful processor, don't think you'll see much of an improvement with any
Ati card over a 4200 if your still using an old Athlon2000XP.

Yes... and when you upgrade to an AMD 64... faster still.

My AMD 2500 is far faster with SETI @ HOME than my AMD 2000... about
twice. But in general usage - about 35% faster.


--
Remember when real men used Real computers!?
When 512K of video RAM was a lot!

Death to Palladium & WPA!!

"Lynley James" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 13:53:59 -0600, "Ken Maltby"
wrote:

They show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on BBC ?

How does the portrayal of "Giles", "Spike", and "The Council"
go over, over there?

Luck;
Ken


IIRC, it's on Sky or some other satellite or cable channel.

Not sure how it goes down though.

Lynley

Actually BBC 2 show it after a certain delay.

Don't know what other Brits think about the accents. To me though Spike's
and Dru' are a but much, and that of one of those potential slayers in the
last series, now showing here, is beyond the pale.

--
Derek

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 23:44:41 +0000 (UTC)
Seahorse wrote:

Following prompt first aid from the medic "J.Clarke"
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained
message On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 14:15:54 -0500:

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 02:20:58 +0000 (UTC)
Seahorse wrote:

Following prompt first aid from the medic "J.Clarke"
managed to scrawl the following
bloodstained message On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 06:29:56 -0500:


1. Don't cross post.

Wrong. Cross post to all relevant newsgroups. That is the way
USENET is intended to work and that way everybody sees the post,
everybody sees the responses, and there is no duplication of
effort.
Bad nettiquette as you well know.

What ever gave you that idea?

It does cause duplication of effort.

Nope. It _eliminates_ duplication of effort.

Scattergun posting is pointless.

Crossposting is not "scattergun posting".

I believe you have crossposting confused with multiposting.

No see:

http://www.netlingo.com/inframes.cfm

What of it? They don't make the distinction, which implies that they
are also unaware of it, which in turn implies that they don't know
enough about USENET for their opinion to be worth reading.

Read the RFCs.

2. Xmas 04.

Wrong again. You need it when you encounter an application that
uses features not present in DirectX versions earlier than 9, you
want to use those features, and you find that enabling them on a
board without hardware acceleration of those features (thus forcing
use of the software implementation that runs on the main CPU)
causes an unacceptable performance penalty.

That means that for some folks the answer is "never" while for
others it's "yesterday", and for the rest it's somewhere in
between.
To the OP the answer is "spend the bucks for an upgrade when you
encounter something that causes you to notice the lack".

Considering the distinct lack of games that actually implement any
DX9 features - 2 to date I believe, it would hardly seem worth the
effort.

If one of those games is important to you then it is worth the
effort. Do not assume that your priorities are everyone's priorities.

By the time they become common place your card will be one if not 2
generations out of date. The mystery features you refer to are
more likely than not disabled rather than CPu rendered,

Some are, some aren't. The vertex shaders are CPU rendered while the
pixel shaders are disabled, for example.


With the scarcity of DX9 available games this point remains moot.

Not if you happen to have one of them. The fact that there are not many
titles does not mean that nobody is running the ones that are out.

but like I said,
its not likely that he has a game requiring it hence my realistic
time estimate.

How do you know what he has? Do you read minds?

The law of probability.

Care to post your analysis?

DX9 comparability is like AGP X8 on a box. Designed to shift units
rather than provide anything useful today...
---------
Rgds Mike
Remove XXX to reply

Against stupidity, even the Gods themselves struggle in vain.
- Goethe

WWW.Dead-Fish.Com - Deep Sea Daddies...
http://www.dvdprofiler.com/mycollect...s=the_Seahorse





--
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 23:59:23 +0000 (UTC)
Seahorse wrote:

Following prompt first aid from the medic "Tim Miser"
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained
message On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 08:05:26 GMT:

"Seahorse" wrote in message
.. .
Following prompt first aid from the medic "Tim Miser"
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained
message On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 23:45:17 GMT:

1. Don't cross post.

Why shouldn't one cross post?

Because it's rude. See below...

http://www.netlingo.com/right.cfm?term=cross%20post

I know what cross posting is thank you very much, but you didn't
answer my question which was WHY shouldn't one cross post. Because
it's frowned upon? Why is it frowned upon?

-Tim

I and many other,

How many others?

but not all users consider it bad practice as best
and ignorant at worst.

Ignorant users think that.

Not everyone agrees on this, see two other
posts this evening going into more detail.

---------
Rgds Mike
Remove XXX to reply

Against stupidity, even the Gods themselves struggle in vain.
- Goethe

WWW.Dead-Fish.Com - Deep Sea Daddies...
http://www.dvdprofiler.com/mycollect...s=the_Seahorse




--
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 23:57:19 +0000 (UTC)
Seahorse wrote:

Following prompt first aid from the medic "J.Clarke"
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained
message On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 14:21:55 -0500:

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 02:22:55 +0000 (UTC)
Seahorse wrote:

Following prompt first aid from the medic "Tim Miser"
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained
message On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 23:45:17 GMT:

1. Don't cross post.

Why shouldn't one cross post?

Because it's rude. See below...

http://www.netlingo.com/right.cfm?term=cross%20post

And of course "netlingo.com" is authoritative.

You might try http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html, which (a) is
an official RFC and therefore authoritative, and (b) explains the
circumstances under which crossposting is and is not appropriate.

Which states:

When sending a message to more than one mailing list, especially
if the lists are closely related, apologize for cross-posting.

I didn't notice one in the original post.

You are confusing USENET with "mailing lists". The two are not the
same, or even very much alike.

Or were you referring to:

In NetNews parlance, "Posting" refers to posting a new article
to a group, or responding to a post someone else has posted.
"Cross-Posting" refers to posting a message to more than one
group. If you introduce Cross-Posting to a group, or if you
direct "Followup-To:" in the header of your posting, warn
readers! Readers will usually assume that the message was
posted to a specific group and that followups will go to
that group. Headers change this behavior.

The lack of warning is also evident.

Try:

- If you feel an article will be of interest to more than one
Newsgroup, be sure to CROSSPOST the article rather than
individually post it to those groups. In general, probably
only five-to-six groups will have similar enough interests
to warrant this.

You could read this:

http://livinginternet.com/u/ua_cross.htm

However, remember that excessive cross-posting is considered bad form
without a good reason, because it multiplies the traffic on the
Internet several times without adding any new content. In the extreme
case, if everybody cross-posted every message to every group, then
every group would look exactly the same!

That refers to _excessive_ cross-posting, of the kind that spammers and
trolls engage in. In any case, why should anyone care what that site
says?

And regardless of any of that, your whining and your continued
determination to debate this point has used up more bandwidth than the
original crosspost did.

You should cross-post only when really needed, and usually not to more
than three groups.

The RFC suggests that it is rare that more than five to six groups will
have similar enough interests for the post to be on-topic in all of
them. And"really needed" is a judgment call. Nobody likes a netcop and
nobody appointed you to the position--if the post is on topic for the
groups to which it was posted, you will be much better thought of if
you let it ride.

He posted to 5 groups.

Was his post on-topic for all of them? If so, then where is the
problem?

IMHO cross posting sucks...

When you gain more experience you will change that view considerably.

---------
Rgds Mike
Remove XXX to reply

Against stupidity, even the Gods themselves struggle in vain.
- Goethe

WWW.Dead-Fish.Com - Deep Sea Daddies...
http://www.dvdprofiler.com/mycollect...s=the_Seahorse





--
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 23:49:33 +0000 (UTC)
Seahorse wrote:

Following prompt first aid from the medic "Lenny"
managed to scrawl the following bloodstained message On Mon, 24 Nov
2003 09:50:31 GMT:
=20

Considering the distinct lack of games that actually implement any
DX9 features - 2 to date I believe, it would hardly seem worth the
effort.

Do note that not only games use DX9-level features.
=20
Yes, but it would seem unlikely for any other purpose.=20
=20
By the time they become common place your card will be one if not 2
generations out of date.

Don't forget, most DX9-compatible cards run older games faster than
their equivalent DX8 counterparts, so it is still an upgrade worth
having in the meanwhile seen from that perspective.
=20
Blowing nearly =A3400

What are you smoking? Dabs will sell you a DirectX 9 capable board for
60 Pounds. A decent brand Radeon 9600 goes for around 100. Even the
Radeon 9800s can be had for under 300.

to play old games slightly quicker does not make a
lot of sense unless you graphics card is very old and underpowered.
If you have a very old and under=3Dpowered graphics card, the matching
low spec PC is unlikely to benefit from your new beast. You would
need to replace mobo, cpu etc etc.
=20
If you have a fairly modern card then currently there is little point
jumping ship for a couple of games that might have prettier or more
realistic visuals IMHO, which brings me full circle.
=20
its not likely that he has a game requiring it hence my realistic
time estimate.

I think it was more like an arbitrary time estimate. Do tell the
reasoning that led you to come up with xmas 04 as a date...
=20
Grey hair mostly...

How did you get so old and learn so little?

---------
Rgds Mike
Remove XXX to reply
=20
Against stupidity, even the Gods themselves struggle in vain.
- Goethe
=20
WWW.Dead-Fish.Com - Deep Sea Daddies...
http://www.dvdprofiler.com/mycollect...3Dthe_Seahorse
=20
=20


--=20
--=20
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 10:01:53 GMT, Darthy
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 13:12:49 +0000, Mark Morrison
wrote:
The jump from a GeForce 2 to a GeForce 3 or higher is quite a big one
- significantly faster, more memory, T & L in hardware.

I bought a GeForce 3 Ti not long after they came out (I had a GeForce
256 at the time, IIRC) and it was a huge step up.

A GF4 is a bigger step above a GF3, but overall, 3~4 are the same
family.

My next card will be at least a GeForce 5 (or whatever brand name they
gave it) but that won't be for a good long while. The DE2 demo ran
fine, and looked lovely. Along with Thief 3, this is the most
graphically intensive game I'm looking forward to.

??? The GeForce 5 has been shipping since last Spring. They're called
5200 / 5600 / 5700 / 5800 / 5900. The GeForce 4 was called "4mx /
4Ti" - but only the "4Ti" were true GF4 cards.

No, the GeForce 5 had a brand name - Power FX ? GeForce Power ?
Sothing like that. I'm not talking about the generation of cards,
just what they were called.

Hopefully, my next upgrade will be a year or so away.

(Well, I have just got a 160 GB hard drive and a 4x DVD Writer...)

A GF3 croaks on 2003 games (Unreal2 etc)

Unreal2 is no great loss...

--

Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes !
They got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses !
And what's with all the carrots ?
What do they need such good eyesight for anyway ?
Bunnies ! Bunnies ! It must be BUNNIES !