deanej
Deity
DX11 offers much better graphics than DX9, does it not?
About DirectX 11
- Thread starter Willem
- Start date
Ummm, no. DX11 offers some features that DX9 does not have. "Better graphics" is a far more complicated and subjective affair that depends mainly on artistic talent and design.
Yes, and by the time Civ 6 comes out 5-6 years from now they might be obsolete because of DirectX 12. Why shouldn't a game developer build for the future rather than simply cater to the current market? They're going to want to continue their sales for a few years yet, but they're not going to do that if the game looks crappy to those people who are going to be buying new video cards/computers in the next few years.
You don't have buy a new computer, your's will probably do just fine. It's that the game is going to look a little better with on of the newer cards. You're probably going to want to upgrade that rig in a couple of years anyway, computers become obsolete every 18 months after all. At that point you can get yourself a DirectX 11 card and gain a whole new perspective on the game.
Jawa'sRevenge
Warlord
They should just use DirectX 10, its proven and common, DirectX 11 is new and found in hardly any games, and the improvements are unnecessary in a game like Civ.
Wikipedia says otherwise.
Now we can expect Crysis level graphics in Civ V.
Wikipedia says otherwise.
Now we can expect Crysis level graphics in Civ V.
Of course not, it's so new that not too many people even have cards that support it yet. NVidia didn't even release a DirectX 11 card until this spring, and I think ATI only has a single version right now. Firaxis is definitely thinking about the future with the decision to include DirectX 11 features. I'm just hoping some of that trickles down to my DirectX 10 card.
I'm not sure about DirectX 11 but certainly DirectX 10 has better graphics capability. Some of the screenshots I've seen of it are absolutely stunning. It includes shader controls, among other things, that makes things like water reflections look almost photorealistic. DirectX is the Microsoft routines that handle graphic output so they most definitely are going to affect the visual quality, and allow those with the artisic talent to really go nuts. I don't know myself how much of an improvement DirectX 11 makes however as I haven't seen any real screenshots of yet.
aMoralAtheist
Chieftain
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2009
- Messages
- 70
I believe the 5800 series (5830, 5850, and 5870) all support DX11 and so does the 5970 (from ATI).
As far as the leaderhead looking bad on your OLD desktop, man for your computer to struggle with Civ4 it has to be very OLD. The key is if the card is dedicated in your laptop or not. Of when you bought it, did it say "shared memory" for the graphics? Also what did you spend on this laptop?
deanej
Deity
Yes, it is old. The desktop is five years old now and has an ATI Radeon 9250 that was obsolete when it was bought. I think it only supported pixel/vertex shader 1.0, if at all.
The laptop has both discrete and integrated graphics (switchable graphics are wonderful), with 512 discrete memory and nearly a gigabyte shared. Unfortunately I can't afford to upgrade until I'm out of college, at least. So unless civ5 is as long-lived as civ4, I don't think I'll get to experience it is full DX11 glory.
Don't believe everything you've seen in screenshots. A lot of those effects are actually possible in DirectX 9 and there is a great deal of propaganda and misinformation out there.
A prime example of this is Crysis, a game with many graphics features intentionally disabled in DirectX 9 that happen to work perfectly fine when re-enabled via console commands or config file edits. Here's an article all about this deceptive practice. Quote from the article:
I'll be running the game in DX9 mode since I'm still using XP, even though the card I have supports DX10. I can't see DX10 or 11 changing the experience much to be honest, and it won't have any effect on gameplay.
Your FireGL 5700 is roughly equivalent to a Radeon HD 3650. While it supports DX10 features, any game that actually uses them extensively probably won't run too well on it. It pulled 15 FPS in Company of Heroes at 1280x1024. You'll be able to run Civ 5, but likely not above the Medium settings.
Will civ5 require really heavy grapchics card?
I've been thinking of getting HD5770 or 5750, but still,
maybe 5670 will make it fine, will not?
And IF 5670 - is it too big a gun to pair it up with a i7-920 CPU?
If you can budget for the 5770 or 5750, get one of those and you won't regret it. They have much higher performance than the 5670.
Arkangelus
Prince
In terms of the DX versions and numbers...
DX 11 is the newest architecture, and so the best effects are likely to be possible with it. It makes sense for all new games in development to use this engine, as it provides the best/most efficient means of displaying 3D graphics.
However, since has been mentioned its relatively "bleeding edge" tech, for a game to be compatable with the mainstream it will require a previous architecture to be usable. Since XP is now the baseline minimum, DX 9 is generally seen as the minimum.
DX 10 was Vista exclusive and really doesnt offer any benefits going forward, since its been replaced by a newer, more efficient version and yet would still prohibit a large range of older yet modern machines from playing the game. There's really no reason to include this as a third option for medium-high graphics - DX11 for max, and DX9 versions for maximum inclusiveness is the most sensible business and coding option to take. Including an entire other display mode with 'some' of the bells and whistles that would only apply to a very narrow range of customers with a Vista, single-generation card setup who are still falling short of the maximum, and are just as easily served by ensuring that its compatable with the previous DX9 XP version.
Of course, its not quite as simple as just "DX capable versions" when it comes to graphical capability, with the sort of scale thats been suggested I'd guess that there will be a huge range of different visual effects that you can tweak to your hearts content, depending on whether you prioritise lighting, particle, shadow or water effects etc over a smooth framerate.
DX 11 is the newest architecture, and so the best effects are likely to be possible with it. It makes sense for all new games in development to use this engine, as it provides the best/most efficient means of displaying 3D graphics.
However, since has been mentioned its relatively "bleeding edge" tech, for a game to be compatable with the mainstream it will require a previous architecture to be usable. Since XP is now the baseline minimum, DX 9 is generally seen as the minimum.
DX 10 was Vista exclusive and really doesnt offer any benefits going forward, since its been replaced by a newer, more efficient version and yet would still prohibit a large range of older yet modern machines from playing the game. There's really no reason to include this as a third option for medium-high graphics - DX11 for max, and DX9 versions for maximum inclusiveness is the most sensible business and coding option to take. Including an entire other display mode with 'some' of the bells and whistles that would only apply to a very narrow range of customers with a Vista, single-generation card setup who are still falling short of the maximum, and are just as easily served by ensuring that its compatable with the previous DX9 XP version.
Of course, its not quite as simple as just "DX capable versions" when it comes to graphical capability, with the sort of scale thats been suggested I'd guess that there will be a huge range of different visual effects that you can tweak to your hearts content, depending on whether you prioritise lighting, particle, shadow or water effects etc over a smooth framerate.
Arkangelus
Prince
I'm pretty sure that all the X58 chipsets on the i7-900 motherboards are both SLI and Xfire capable, so I would definately reccomend going with the 5770. In terms of the sweet spot between price and performance it definately seems to be number one just now, and putting more than one card into crossfire scales AMAZINGLY well, with almost a direct 100% increase per card. Until AMD refresh their lineup (and particularly address the tesselating bottlenecks) later in the year, that one is definately the best value for money and has an almost flawless upgrade path - all you'd have to consider is making sure that your motherboard and PSU could handle it if you upgraded that way down the line.
You're misunderstanding what I'm asking about. Of course it makes no sense to include a DirectX 10 mode. However, when it was developed, it added some effects and functions that were no doubt carried over into DirectX 11 as well. Since DirectX 10 cards should be capable of displaying those shared routines, they should gain some benefit from DirectX 11 even though they can't process all the newer effects. Only the ones that are shared in common. What I want to know is what kinds of things were developed for DirectX 10 that are still being used in 11, that my video card and Vista OS should be able to make use of.
DirectX 9 provides SM3, DirectX 10 provides SM4 and DirectX 11 provides SM5 (as well as hardware tesselation).
One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the newest effects (hardware tesselation in particular) are so extremely demanding that they cannot be fully utilized on even the fastest cards out there.
The main difference between SM3 and SM4 is the maximum length of a shader program, something that is very specific to the game engine design and not something that can be shown visually in any kind of an obvious way.
fromeast2west
Warlord
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2010
- Messages
- 112
DX10 and 11 may not allow any new visual effects, but the newer cards are more capable overall.
DX11 is specifically designed to allow games to run better by integrating GPGPU services and better integration with multi-core CPUs.
You may not see any specific visual differences in the game the way you did with past DX updates. (Tangent/ I remember the first time I built a rig with a surround sound capable card and a GPU capable of modern lighting effects, the differences were huge . ... and I think the first game I played that used some of the effects was one of the Balder's Gate series...)
By running the game with a DX11 compatible GPU and OS, and a multi-core CPU, you should see a big difference in overall performance when playing Civ V.
DX11 is specifically designed to allow games to run better by integrating GPGPU services and better integration with multi-core CPUs.
You may not see any specific visual differences in the game the way you did with past DX updates. (Tangent/ I remember the first time I built a rig with a surround sound capable card and a GPU capable of modern lighting effects, the differences were huge . ... and I think the first game I played that used some of the effects was one of the Balder's Gate series...)
By running the game with a DX11 compatible GPU and OS, and a multi-core CPU, you should see a big difference in overall performance when playing Civ V.
Not entirely true. Hardware tessellation provides a major visual improvement but comes at a hefty cost.
Check out this tessellation comparison.
fromeast2west
Warlord
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2010
- Messages
- 112
Tessellation allows for an increased polygon count in objects that are closer to the viewer, but don't add new effects the way things like dynamic lighting and transparency does.
So DX11 may allow for an overall improvement in image quality and/or frame rate, but you could produce the same the same result with brute force and huge polygon counts.
For people running an average 1280x1024 / 60hz LCd, there shouldn't be much to visually distinguish a higher end DX9 or DX10 card from a DX11 card in a Civ type game. If CivV can make use of the GPGPU and multicore benefits of DX11 then the biggest benefit of DX11 is going to be game play (less lag at the end of turns), and not visual.
Similar threads
