DX9 vs DX10 - Wats the difference can u describe ?

[notyboyviv]

I don't wanna see those screenshots from DX9 Crysis and DX10 Crysis showing the difference, i've already seen more screenshots than you wud put up here, i want you to describe the difference in words and explain if at all u know the real difference dont just copy paste from some other article.

 

I wanted to ask this ques bcoz of Assassins creed that i completed recently, this game has separate dx9 and dx10 exe files ofcourse for playing it with the directx we have so i thought is there such a big difference in DX9 and DX10 that i should start off with Vista now just for gaming. I've been on XP all the way, i've used Linux ubuntu and Vista too but thats only for my computer engg. I'm using core 2duo with 9600GT which supports DX10 so just wondering should i install vista on my desktop pc rite now to have a better visual gaming experience ??

 

The only problem is that u hear from everyone Vista is not that compatible, i have it installed on my Laptop and many softwares are not supported and for gamers like me softwares like imagedrives dont work on vista, for that i had to install virtualclonedrive which works on vista. So let me know guys what should i do Vista or XP, DX9 or DX10 ?

[MarketTantrik]

Windows 7

[ReD]

go with Windows 7 dude instead

[notyboyviv]

howz ur experience with Windows 7... is it like the crappy isues that Vista had or better than that. I guess DX11 in Windows 7 is not yet utilized by games so thats not much of a concern.

 

And the ques i'm more concerned about is DX9 and DX10 difference.

[DevilsOwn]

i recently upgraded to Win 7; and the experience is brilliant. the OS is light, fast, and it runs everything much more smoother.

 

gaming is better because the memory management is better (though i dont know the tech bit behind this). Not many games (and PCs for that matter) are ready to run Directx 11 games. But i guess, soon it will be a bare necessity. So, go with Windows 7.

[notyboyviv]

ya thats wat i said games dont use directx11 as of now so not really gave a thought about going for dx11 windows 7 but lets see. U said Gaming is better in windows 7 ...like wat made u feel its better. Wat abt the other issues that vista had..is it the same in wondows 7 or better ??

 

 

And wat about the DX9 and DX10 difference...u guys too wud have thought about it...so nobody can help hmmm, well i expected better response n answers on DX10 from the only indian gaming community. Anyway thanx to everyone who told me to go for Windows 7 i'll see myself if its really worth it..just for gaming.

[gonekrazy3000]

Windows 7 runs a lot faster even in Dx10 games. Its basically a slimmed down Vista.

with all the bloated fat that wasted memory removed. So forget vista. just get 7.

Btw. games like Just Cause 2 have abandoned Dx9 completely. With most game companies

gearing up towards Dx11 now for their future games its safe to say that Dx9 is on its deathbed.

Just like 7 Dx11 is a slimmed down better version of Dx10. Even older Dx10.1 cards can run most of the features except tesselation. So i'm not surprised that a lot of Dx11 games will be coming out soon.

[praveer]

In your case of Assassin's Creed...the visual difference between Dx10 & Dx9 are nil, there are differences in performance.

Also Win 7 is way better than vista if you want to game in Dx10.

 

 

The actual difference between Dx9 & Dx10 however, are different approaches to rendering techniques.

Dx9 is also quite limited in approaches compared to Dx10 & even more so when compared to Dx11...for example in Unreal Engine 3 the MSAA buffer is applied before light prepass so the areas exposed to lighting will not receive any anti aliasing at all. This is partly because of the nature of Unreal Engine 3's renderer & partly because of the limitation of Dx9. This problem is fixed in Dx10 mode cause you have certain other alternatives to work with.

 

Also PC's Dx9 is not as flexible as the Dx9 in Xbox 360 or PS3's low level libraries, you cannot do multi-threaded rendering in Dx9 (PC), this means lots of under utilization of hardware. These are just few pros vs cons, the actual set of difference is rather huge & quite technical.

 

Btw fun facts....support for hardware tessellation is a feature that's completely absent on Dx10 but its present on Dx9....& the 5xxx ATI series aren't the first GPUs with a built in tessellator unit. ATI have been making cards with built in tessellators (though not as advanced) since past few years on, but they were never used even once in any game. And there have been games with tessellation for terrain & water before too (like Crysis used tessellation for sea water & I think for Terrain generation as well, Gears 2 & maybe Halo 3 too used tessellation for water etc)

[XeOn]

Also PC's Dx9 is not as flexible as the Dx9 is Xbox 360 or PS3's low level libraries.

 

Praveer can you please elaborate on this point... i thought that the lib's are the same on the console as well ... i thought the difference is in the core architecture and not the lib files for the game... this opened up a new thought for me ... can you please give me a brief of these lib files for the 360 specific...

[praveer]

I'm not really the right guy to answer those queries as I am no game dev, but from what I understand Xbox 360's Dx9 is an "extended" version compared to Dx9.c on PC.

Its more multi thread oriented, you cannot do simultaneous rendering on PC's Dx9 like you could on Xbox 360's (extended) Dx9. This makes the PC code run slower than console code on the CPU side at the very least, especially when you have a multi threaded approach with multiple number of render targets...like 60-70 of them running at once. (ofcourse its not a direct comparison since you could simply throw in an i7 9xx model & put everything in your favor, but the comparison here is more relative & passive)

 

The same thing should apply to PS3 (which is a diff beast altogether) & its libraries...but I barely have any idea about it.

[MarketTantrik]

Btw fun facts....support for hardware tessellation is a feature that's completely absent on Dx10 but its present on Dx9....& the 5xxx ATI series aren't the first GPUs with a built in tessellator unit. ATI have been making cards with built in tessellators (though not as advanced) since past few years on, but they were never used even once in any game. And there have been games with tessellation for terrain & water before too (like Crysis used tessellation for sea water & I think for Terrain generation as well, Gears 2 & maybe Halo 3 too used tessellation for water etc)

IIRC, older games like Messiah and Outcast also had their own tessellation code, though they were not driven by hardware calls.

[praveer]

Outcast used a Voxel terrain engine & Messiah used Bezier Curves/patches.

[MarketTantrik]

Ahhh!! Voxel terrain. I remember now. Do you remember what the original Delta Force and DF2 games used to render that endless terrain?

[praveer]

Do you remember what the original Delta Force and DF2 games used to render that endless terrain?

Voxels here too.

[MarketTantrik]

Yup. Looked like crap, but the draw distance was mind bending for its time.

[Ne0]

what exactly is this tessellation ? i see an option to turn it on in metro 2033, is it related to textures ?

[MarketTantrik]

Praveer can answer better. I believe it relates to the ability for textures to have depth.

[Dr. AWESOME]

Look at this, best Example!

 

Order is Dx 9, Dx 10 and Dx 11 by UniGine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope you will understand now! IMO I don't see there is much diff between Dx 9 and Dx 10, but there is a lot diff between Dx 10 and Dx 11!

[praveer]

In Layman's term Tessellation simply means that the geometry of an object will look to be made of a much higher polygon count that it actually is.

 

In a normal game world when you observe an object you only see a single side, thereby making the polygons that are used elsewhere (which you dont see) useless...now when you tessellate that object, you start to use each & every polygon that the object has to offer on the part/area of object that you can SEE. Its called adaptive tessellation, adaptive cause the level of detail keeps changing dynamically according to the position of camera...on the fly, instead of switching between 2-3 different LOD meshes.

 

Now most of the people here must already know what normal mapping/bump mapping is, its just a shader that's present on top of a flat surface to give the "illusion" that it has depth to it because those things will react to lighting as if they are a bumpy surface instead of being flat. There's this thing called Parallax mapping which is an even advanced form of normal map, its much better & realistic to look at & an even advanced form of parallax mapping is "parallax occlusion mapping" these are even more accurate & are able to produce dynamic soft shadows :

 

 

You can observe that the rocks & stones look as if they are real objects made up of polygons. In truth however they are just a flat surface with the POM shader on top of it. Now you may ask why go through things so complicated ? Why not simply render those objects using polygons instead ?

 

Well its because there's only so much polygon you can push at a single time while rendering a game, this is why you emphasize on "Tricks" & "Illusions" rather than using real polygons. But these are still inaccurate cause they aren't real polygons.....this where Tessellation comes in, what it does is that it simply "Tessellates" the object (like how I mentioned previously) & then uses those polygons to generate a surface with REAL objects on top of it instead of just using a shader.

 

The end result ? Its like this:

The stones here are not made through some tricks or illusion...they are real objects existing in physical space within the game world.

 

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is all but just 1 use for tessellation, other uses includes:

1) Increased fluidity of water & softness in cloth material without using something like physx (seen in Gears 2,Halo 3,Crysis,Dirt 2 PC)

2) You can use tessellation to render a terrain that looks smooth & curvy instead of blocky & triangular. (seen in Halo Wars, Crysis)

3) Smooth character models with no visible polygon edges or angular edges (Adaptive Tessellation is used here & it can be seen in AvP & Metro 2033..PC ver only)

 

Imo these are the things which "REALLY" benefit from tessellation, those rocks & stones are better off using parallax mapping shaders cause honestly speaking, using real geometry when you could almost closely imitate it....would be such a waste of resources. Also point 1 & point 2 can work out with most of the tessellator units, infact you can work it out even in Xbox 360's tessellator unit !! But for point 3 you need your hardware to have a hull & domain shader which can only be found on the new GPUs.

[MarketTantrik]

Awesome explanation Praveer

 

Thanks a ton.