When will I *need* a Directx 9 card?

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. It does cause duplication of
effort. Scattergun posting is pointless.

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generations out of date.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

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