Direct X 9, 10, or 11?

[Capt Ajax]

OK, I know this has probably been discussed before and is somewhere in the thousands fo post on this forum......

Question:

If my system just meets the minimum requirements for gameplay should I be runnign the game on Direct X 9 or does it matter?

Why do you get the choice?

 

[Horizons]

DirectX 9 support exists for people who, for some bizarre reason, are using Windows XP on their gaming rig.

 

[tokala]

And for people who want to play the game on a DX9 video card. Any one of those conditions is sufficient for DX10/11 mode not to work at all, and LOTS of potential Civ5 customers fall in one of those categories

With an around minimum video card DX9 is probably faster, but you should just try out both. The DX9 mode uses more main memory, and has some annoyingly slow texture streaming, though.

 

[Polish]

I have a better than minimum system and a nearly recommended video card, but the DirectX 10/11 mode will not work for me at all. The mouse pointer is so far off that I can't even get the game to start. Not possible to click the start game button. Sokay though because the DirectX 9 works just fine and I think they spent too much time and effort on pretty pictures anyway. Would rather have had them spend some of that time and effort on AI programming;-)

 

[smellymummy]

while the other version works fine on my pc, the dx9 is just so much faster for me, so i play that

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Moved to tech support.

In general: Low specs = lower DX.

But we could be more specific if we'd knew your system .

 

[Mark Havel]

DirectX 9 support exists for people who, for some bizarre reason, are using Windows XP on their gaming rig.

I can only approve this frank support toward progress and modernity, but unfortunately, the DirectX 10/11 version of the game is far more crash-prone than the DX9 on my Windows 7 64 bits rig. So I went for the DirectX 9 version instead.
Not to mention that a certain major real-time strategy game released last July happens to only support DirectX 9...

 

[Capt Ajax]

Moderator Action: Moved to tech support.

In general: Low specs = lower DX.

But we could be more specific if we'd knew your system .

My Laptop:

Intel core 2 duo T5900 2.20 Ghz
4 GB DDR2 RAM
512MB Nvidea GeForce 9500M GS Turbocache
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

 

[tokala]

You should run DX9

 

[alaric1112]

I have a laptop hp with a 8400gs 256 graphic card i know its low end but is is a dx10 card i get some redraw with the terrain when playing dx9 version other than that the game runs fine.Would i get better performance using dx10?Less redraw?

 

[tokala]

Faster redraw but slower framerate.

 

[Capt Ajax]

OK, I spent some time on both and believe it or not...DX 10 actually runs smoother on my system than DX 9.....huh? go figure

 

[Mark Havel]

That was intended by design. If Microsoft took such lengthy effort to completely redesign DirectX with the version 10 to the point it is not portable to Windows XP, the least we can hope is to have tangible results such as these once developers have acquired some experience with the API.

 

[alaric1112]

I was wondering how to play the dx10 version.when i installed the game it gave me the option to install dx10 version.now that ive been playing dx 9 version for awhile could i go back and install dx10 vesion? it seems to be grayed out is there any way around this?

 

[The_J]

You need to have at least Vista to be able to play in DX10, maybe that's the issue (?).

 

[alaric1112]

You need to have at least Vista to be able to play in DX10, maybe that's the issue (?).

I do have vista,must be something else.

 

[Mark Havel]

It's simple: go in the properties in the Steam icon of the game, then click on "Define launch options" (or something close to that, my Steam is in French) and write "/dx11", obviously without the quotes. Of course, you'll have to use the Steam shortcut to launch the game in DirectX 11, but the principle is the same for the desktop shortcut; it's somewhere in the launch properties.

 

[IsleGuy57]

Hi, after installing a new ATI card, the game will not go past the opening cinematic. The video goes black and nothing I seem to do corrects it. I am currently running:

AMD Athalon II x2 245 2.9 ghz
4GB Ram
DirectX 11
ATI Radeon 5870
Windows 7 64 bit

The game was running fine before the install of the 5870 with the onboard chipset. That chipset is an ATI 4250. Is this a need for updated Catalyst drivers or something else? Thanks for any input.

 

[tokala]

Try uninstalling the old driver, and reinstall the latest Catalyst. If it does not work, or only with glitches, try the older 10.8.

 

[IsleGuy57]

Thanks tokala, I uninstalled the drivers and installed the 10.10. They got everything working.