Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk
Posted on January 14th, 2010 by Mike Jennings
Do you care about DirectX 11?
Before every new graphics card release, ATI holds a conference call to go through the chip’s specification, marketing strategy and future. It’s normally hosted by the head of the team that developed the card and is attended by journalists from across Europe, and normally they’re pretty routine.
During the call to announce the new Radeon HD 5670, however, a comment from Shaila Bansal, senior product manager for the Radeon HD 5000-series, sparked my interest. “There is a lot of demand from customers to have the latest version of DirectX”, she said, referring to a slide in our presentation PDFs that allegedly illustrated that point before going on to say how the new card is squarely aimed at the “mainstream” consumer rather than enthusiasts who might salivate over the Radeon HD 5970.
These approaches seem entirely contradictory, and I’m not convinced that so-called “mainstream” consumers take much notice of which version of DirectX their new card runs. The mainstream market’s pretty big, too: another slide in the presentation illustrated that 66% of new GPU purchases are made for less than $100.
Despite this, I was told that nearly twice as many games are now released with DirectX 11 features as were launched at the same stage of DirectX 10’s lifespan and, while this may well be true, numerous reviews and features have found that there’s little difference between the two APIs unless you happen to have a card powerful enough to utilise the various new lighting and tesselation effects. As good as it is, the HD 5670 just isn’t powerful enough to take full advantage of DirectX 11, and someone buying a new GPU to play World of Warcraft and The Sims 3 likely wouldn’t be interested in these incremental improvements, especially if you’ll only be able to see them by squinting.
Instead, more obvious reasons present themselves. The HD 5670 is clearly a newer product than the HD 4670, and the similar price of both parts makes the choice of newer card easy. ATI also placed much stock in the card’s “easy upgradeability”, and it’s easy to see why: it’s smaller and neater than almost every other card ATI sells, which makes it ideal for compact machines (such as those bought from the likes of PC World and Dixons) and media centres. All of these reasons come before the mysterious-sounding DirectX 11 in the buying decision pecking order.
I’ve no doubt that, as prices rise, so does awareness of DirectX 11 – and I daresay that, for those buying a Radeon HD 5870, HD 5970 or a new Fermi card (when they eventually arrive), the inclusion of DirectX 11 is as much of a concern as the number of stream processors, clock speeds and the width of the memory bus.
If you’re spending £60 on a GPU, though, it’s a very different story, and one which I reckon doesn’t hinge on a burning desire for DirectX 11.If you do find it vital, though, then please let me know in the comments.
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16 Responses to “ Do you care about DirectX 11? ”
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January 14th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
I think it’s important from the perspective of being absolutely up to date with Windows/Applications when you are buying a new card. No point in buying something that will be out of date and soon as DirectX 11 (or whichever version) is required for you latest software upgrade.
January 14th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
The human eye finds it very difficult to notice imperceptible differences in images and colour, i.e. — the change from Direct X10 to Direct x11. The only time in the future when we’ll notice any differences is if someone moved from DirectX11 to DirectX16 overnight. Otherwise, it’s all just a marketing ploy.
January 14th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
I consider myself a mainstreamer by nature.I will wait until the cards have been out for a while and the price has dropped.I will then go for the best value against performance.I have currenlty a 2600XT DDR4.Having wrung every last drop of performance from that I will hopefully upgrade in due course to a 5770.This is on the basis of A) Value for Money then B) Power consumption then C) Considerations such as Direct X11.So in answer to your question.No it’s not the most critical to me.Now if I was after the most eye candy from my games my view would change to A) Performance Value for money (IE ATI 5850).Then Direct X11 (for future proof) then C) Power consumption (after all a pair of crossfired 5770’s may have almost the same performance as a 5870 for 2/3rds the cost but the power consuption would be much greater.I am currently waiting for Nvidea to release their cards.Not that i want one.It;s just that prices of ATI cards will not drop till the competition hots up for DX11 cards.
January 14th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
I am entirely happy with the gaming market arm’s race. It means that I can lurk around and buy “outdated” graphics cards which run about ten times quicker than I actually need for my purposes, for beans, because obsessive upgraders have left them well behind.
January 14th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Personally, no! I don’t give 2 hoots. I suspect only “gamers” and higher end PC hobbyists really care. In terms of Word, Firefox/IE, Excel and Outlook (core applications), I presume DirectX is irrelevant.
January 14th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
@P Andrew – DirectX 11 is irrelevant for those programs as you suspect. However, they all make use of DirectX 9 hardware acceleration which has been around for years now. DX9 is also used for aero desktop rendering in vista and windows 7. DX10 isn’t that great an improvement to be honest and I don’t expect DX11 to be all that either but without the minority of enthusiasts pushing the envelope and demanding more graphics effects and detail nothing would have progressed beyong pong.
January 14th, 2010 at 10:37 pm
Graphic cards have moved on and it’s not just about pretty pictures. GPGPU is now being pushed forward in a big way. Video editing and Folding @ home being a good expamles of other tasks a GPU is now capable of, and direct X 11 opens it up even more.
January 15th, 2010 at 9:13 am
The main think I look for in a graphics card is quietness. And if possible, silence. It’s not bang per buck that excites me, it’s bang per decibel (or lack of).
Yet group tests never seem to print that particular graph.
Am I alone in my selection criteria?
P.
January 15th, 2010 at 11:52 am
I agree with Paul Ockenden, please show acoustic noise figures for graphics cards, and give me enough information to be able to find the best silent (no fan) graphics card in the price band for the group test.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
As long as the card is passively cooled, uses as little power as possible, can display the Windows desktop and can render H.264 Full HD video without dropping frames, I don’t really care about the rest of the specification.
January 15th, 2010 at 11:42 pm
The biggest leap with DirectX 11 is the compute shaders (GPGPU). Having sped up my companies application several years ago using DirectX9 and realising the limitations of shader model 2.0/3.0/4.0, this is going to make my life a whole lot better – and our customers of course !
January 15th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
wel i searced a poppular blog site on google because i need some help with my moms laptop. she forrgot the password to the admin account and now i can only log into the user account. i do not have any access to anything dowloadabe. so i though i was fucked in the ass untill i found a disk laying around its a windows 95 disk and i dont know if i should install it onto this computer i think if u do that then i can make another account and everything but im not 100% sure can somebody please help me out? i’vealready tried cmd and everything possible my last chace is this disk..
January 16th, 2010 at 10:15 am
I had 6GB Ram put in my i7 computer thus upgrading it to a 64-bit Windows 7 Pro. Went into Performance Information and Tools then clicked on the link next to the printer “View and print detailed performance and system information.” – It tells me I am using DirectX 10.
I downloaded the “DirectX SDK – (August 2009)” from the Microsoft website. It gave me a bunch of things in something called “DirectX Sample Browser” which gives me options of things to install. This is where I get lost. I’m not sure if I’ve taken a step in the right direction or more confused than I was before.
January 16th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
@Dual Screen Laptops, You probably fine, I’m guessing its refereeing to the hardware version supported by your GPU.
I care for some DX11 fun but not yet, first I want Fermi to release (so I can pick up an ATi for cheap). Secondly I want HDMI 1.4 or Crysis 2, whichever come first.
January 21st, 2010 at 12:25 am
The biggest reason to get a DirectX 11 cards is not improved graphics it’s support for Compute Shaders this is microsofts version of General Purpose processing on graphics cards. Which is great for tasks that can be made very parallel such as video encoding. Many programs are currently being adjusted to take advantage of it. How was that missed in the article, it is the main draw of dx 11.
September 20th, 2011 at 2:54 pm
Tottaly agree with Pete. DX11 is somehow a necessity if you want to do something more demanding as video proccesing. Eather way i prefer having an evolutioned driver – codec even if that means waiting a bit more or spending a few bucks extra for it.