Directx10.1 posts

Spring has arrived and with it some new mainstream graphics card offerings from the Big Two of Nvidia and AMD. From the Nvidia side comes the GeForce GTX 275, while AMD counters with the ATI Radeon HD 4890.Both are targeting the $200-$250 price range.

As far as comparing the two cards, early reviews from hardware sites like Firing Squad show that both have their advantages and disadvantages. The new Radeon card handles DirectX10 supported games like Stormrise and Battleforge better but the GeForce card has support for PhysX which more and more games are using for the in-game physics. The article also points out that these releases will likely be the last DirectX10 cards from both companies as the expected launch of Windows 7 later this year will also bring out the first DirectX11 supported graphics cards.

If you have been waiting to play the PC version of The Creative Assembly's next RTS game, the sci-fi title Stormrise, you might want to consider upgrading your PC rig. In a new chat at PCGameHardware.com, the lead designer of the title Artem Kulakov is quoted as saying, "Stormrise has been designed for DirectX 10 and Vista only right from the start."

Yep. That means all of you Windows XP owners (and there are a lot of you) are out in the cold when it comes to playing this game. Kulakov states the reason for the move was simple: "Integrating DX10.1 was an opportunity to increase performance and improve visual quality even further." Of course it also limits how many units of the PC version will be sold (it's also coming out for the Xbox 360 and PS3). With the release of Windows 7 just around the corner this may turn out to be the last Vista exclusive game to be released.

[Via Blue's News]

AMD's ATI division continues to keep the pressure on its main graphics card rival Nvidia. Today the company announced the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 4830 graphics card, a full DirectX10.1 supported card that's supposed to be priced at less than $150.

The new 4830 card can be set up to use ATI's Crossfire feature which means people can put as many as four graphics cards in one PC for even more performance in games. The product, which is supported by over a dozen graphics card company, is now available for sale. Reviews are already up on sites like FiringSquad and others.

AMD continues to put the pressure on its main rival Nvidia by offering some new members of its ATI Radeon graphics card family to consumers. This morning the company revealed two new value priced additions to the line-up; the $59 Radeon HD 4550 and the $39 Radeon HD 4350.

The 4550 version packs 512 MB of memory, 80 stream processing cores and fully supports DirectX10.1 games. The 4350 version contains 256 MB of memory but no mention of DirectX10.1 support. Both new cards will have an number of companies support them with their own versions and both are currently due for release sometime in October.

In the latest salvo made in the graphics wars, AMD today announced that they are cooperating with a number of game developers to make their PC games work well on DirectX10.1. AMD claims that only their ATI Radeon graphics cards offer full "top to bottom" DirectX10 graphics support.

The specific games mentioned as receiving full DirectX10.1 support from AMD are Battleforge, the fantasy RTS game from Phenomic and Electronic Arts, Stormrise, the sci-fi RTS game from The Creative Assembly and Sega and the little known RPG title Cloud 9 from NHN Games. AMD has also released a small "Ping-Pong" interactive demo to show off their use of the DirectX10.1 demo. The demo requires Microsoft Vista Service Pack 1. and ATI Radeon HD 3600 series or an ATI Radeon HD 3800 series graphics card with at least 512MB of video memory, the ATI Catalyst 8.3drivers or higher, a dual- or quad-core CPU and 2GB of RAM. Folks without those requirements can download a video showing the demo in action.

Ubisoft's decision to remove the DirectX10.1 effects from the PC port of Assassin's Creed has generated a ton of controversy and now the patch has finally gone live. The 1.02 patch is now available to download from us and deals with a number of issues that have cropped up since the release of the game about a month ago. Ubisoft states the patch has "fixed broken post-effects on DirectX 10.1 enabled cards" but that's only kind of true; as we have reported the publisher has removed the DirectX10.1 support entirely.

The full details on the 1.02 patch are after the jump

Download the new Assassin's Creed patch right now

A few weeks ago Ubisoft announced that it would release a patch for their PC ports of their highly successful stealth action game Assassin's Creed. However, instead of fixing bugs or adding new features, the patch is to remove the support for DirectX10.1 graphics. According to the initial announcement about the patch the DirectX10.1 support in the game added "a render pass during post-effect which is costly."

While the patch has yet to be released as of this writing, some are accusing Ubisoft of playing hardware politics with this proposed DirectX10.1 removal from the game. Why? Because at the moment the only graphics cards in stores that support DirectX10.1 are cards from AMD's ATI unit (specifically the Radeon HD 3000 hardware). Performance issues with Assassin's Creed were reported on NVIDIA graphics cards. The problem is that Assassin's Creed is part of NVIDIA's "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" marketing program where the company makes deals with game publishers to add their logo and ad support for a number of PC games.

So did NVIDIA ask Ubisoft to remove the DirectX10.1 feature from Assassin's Creed? Officially the answer is, "No." TG Daily contacted both Ubisoft and NVIDIA reps and both denied any sort of external influence, saying that the decision was made by the game's development team. The author feels that the game simply was not finished in terms of proper code and that the programming team put in the DirectX10.1 support without making sure the game would work on normal DirectX10 hardware. It just goes to prove that developing PC games without taking the tons of different hardware combinations can still be tricky.