DX10

I don't have a cutting edge system but any stretch of the imagination. I run an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200 with 2 gigs of RAM and a Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS on Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit version. My last two card have been ATIs, but I couldn't find a cost-effective card produced by them that included DX10 compatibility; the 8600 was an affordable way to get into the DX10 door.

I've played a couple of games that have made use of DX10, Book 11 of LoTRO and Hellgate: London. Both instances have been underwhelming experiences, with a tantalizing hint of the greatness that is to come for computer graphics. Hellgate: London I played in beta. The DX10 version of the game made my hard drive churn like my first car, a '76 Honda civic, which translated into about 10 fps, a great slide-show presentation, but not so good for an action rpg. Playing around with some of the video options helped considerably. Turning off the DX10 shadows and sliding down the drawing of distant objects brought the frame-rate up to a playable 20 fps, but still not ideal. Switching back to DX9, I got a smooth and consistent 60 fps, but a noticeable reduction in eye-candy. I will say that after seeing the rendered DX10 textures, it was extremely painful to go back to playing in DX9 mode.

Now, what's interesting is that the Hellgate boards were full of people with 8800s reporting the same frame-rate I had with my 8600. That's encouraging news because it could mean that current drivers are not even close to their full optimized DX10 potential. On the other hand, there were plenty of people of the opinion that the current 8 series are all underpowered for DX10 and only future cards will be able to run it properly.

I'm not so sure I agree with that. I'm sure future cards will blow the socks off DX10 applications. But the current 8 family series can likely run them well if they're using better drivers. Take Book 11 of LoTRO, released last week and included a beta version of DX10. I tried it out and just like HG:L, experienced crippling frame-rates, hovering around 10 fps. But unlike HG:L, throttling back the options to the lowest level granted absolutely no corresponding increase in frame-rate. The frame-rate remained at 10 fps from the highest level settings to the very lowest. This would indicate that today's drivers are not even close to being optimized for DX10. While I didn't see a dramatic difference in textures in LoTRO, I did note more complex shadow renderings; the visual difference wasn't as great as it was for HG:L.

I guess it's also worth noting that both of these games are running a beta version of DX10 and that there's some optimization that can occur in their very own game code that could dramatically improve DX10 performance. Developers of both hardware and software have had to scramble to get DX10 implemented because Microsoft only just released the tool-set this past spring. But given a bit more time, I see these developers catching up with the curve and giving us some really spectacular images to go along with our gaming experience.