Shoutbox

I don't know how many of you keep up with the news, but it turns out that the next incremental update of DirectX 10 - DirectX 10.1 - to be included in Vista SP1 will not be supported by DirectX 10 hardware.

Basically what this means is that if you've bought a new DirectX 10 card, it's pretty much obsolete already.

But fear not, because DirectX 10.1 isn't a massive upgrade - it adds very few new features, and of course, like all previous DirectX upgrades, previously supported features will still work with your card.

I still think it's a rather stupid thing for Microsoft to do, though.

Its not stupid at all, all the directx 10 features will use the card, but the new directx 10.1 features which the cards dont support yet wont.
microsoft cant just magically change all cards to support the new features ( thats up to the manufacturer, if they wish to release firmware/driver updates to support it)

err directx10 had tonnes of new stuff compared to dx9

I'd think it was more the last DX that was underspecified. When you leave wriggling room in a standard, you can't expect certain features to be there.

I think we should take a lesson from the first revisions of OpenGL- that specified a certain minimum size for the matrix stack, for example. I think that the OGL interface should have handled as many matricies as memory allowed, and how that worked in hardware should be irrelevant. There was just too many strange requirements on hardware and implementation and yet too much breathing room in actual capability.

It's silly to break something twice, and that's certainly what this feels like. Having a standard that was essentially never used before the next revision came along was probably a dumb idea and should have been better thought out. However, it's not as serious as it sounds. There isn't any real functional difference between 10 and 10.1. Games should run as well on one as on the other, but the stronger standard of 10.1 points hardware developers in the right directions.

[Sort of- the RIGHT direction would be for game engine / rendering / CAD companies to consult with hardware vendors directly about the way forward.. who are these "Microsoft" people anyway? And get off my lawn!]

Wow this is old news

Now were talking about PCI-E 2 support.