What Everybody Ought to Know About Directx 10, 10.1 and 11

Directx 11 - 2009?

Direct X (or DX) is Microsoft’s interface for managing multimedia, video, and gaming. Layman’s: It makes the pretty pictures, pretty , in PC games.

So what’s the deal with versions 10, 10.1, and 11?

Direct X 10
The first major update to the Direct3D component of Directx in a long while. Applications and games made with DX 10 are not backwards compatible. It’s also a Vista exclusive, leaving all of us XP users in the dark.

Direct X 10.1
An update with some added features. As of November 2008, Nvidia doesn’t support this update. Nvidia did implement many of the features when designing video cards for DX 10 though.

Direct X 11
Still in development and backwards compatible with 9 and 10. Expected to launch in 2009 around the same time as Windows 7. Nvidia and ATI have announced plans to support DX 11.

Conclusion

If your going to purchase any hardware soon, don’t let ATI’s marketing plan convince you Directx 10.1 is a must have. This is evident when playing Far Cry 2, a 10.1 game, on a Nvidia graphics card. There are no issues because Nvidia’s cards support many of the mandatory features in the 10.1 specification, but they didn’t meet them all.