Vista Service Pack 1 comes with an important update for gamers – DirectX 10.1. The catch? You need brand new hardware to support it, and NVIDIA enthusiasts are left totally out in the cold. <\/p>\n
One of the benefit Windows Vista brought to the gaming table was the next version of DirectX \u00e2\u20ac\u201c version 10. With the potential improvements to 3D gaming potentially outweighing the anticipated performance drop in running games on a more resource-hungry operating system, most hardcore gamers waited until ATI and NVIDIA released their DirectX 10-capable GPUs before taking the plunge and upgrading to Vista. <\/p>\n
Well, it looks like those early adopters might be left somewhat in the lurch, as Microsoft has recently announced that Windows Vista SP1 will include a minor version upgrade to DirectX \u00e2\u20ac\u201c DirectX 10.1. This includes some features originally intended for DirectX 10 but which had to be left to one side, and as such DirectX 10.1 is a superset of DirectX 10 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c supporting all of DirectX 10\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s features with some additions and enhancements of its own. <\/p>\n
DirectX 10.1 offers greater application control of the GPU\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shading and filtering resources, especially multi-sampled and super-sampled antialiasing. The shader model is updated from 4.0 to 4.1, and floating point technology is beefed up from 16-bit to full 32-bit, which should demonstrate a direct improvement in quality for HDR (High Dynamic Range) lighting effects. In addition, all DirectX 10.1-capable hardware should be able to run 4xAA (antialiasing) as a mandatory setting. <\/p>\n
So all this is great news, right? If you lashed out on a DirectX 10 card, then perhaps not. Although DirectX 10.1 is fully backwards-compatible with DirectX 10 features and hardware, the reverse isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t true. Neither NVIDIA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s GeForce 8 series nor ATI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Radeon HD 2x series of GPUs support DirectX 10.1. ATI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new products \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the Radeon 3870 and 3850 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c do support DirectX 10.1, but NVIDIA apparently has no plans to release a DirectX 10.1-capable GPU. Their next product range, codenamed GT200, will support DirectX 11, but as this is due for release before DirectX 11 itself it will be interesting to see how well early products based on this GPU will support the new DirectX technology. <\/p>\n
So gamers have a difficult choice to make \u00e2\u20ac\u201c go with NVIDIA and be restricted to DirectX 10, or travel the ATI path and get enhanced gaming visuals. And as for those unlucky users who have alreadyt upgraded their graphics cards as a prelude to migrating to Vista, and are now facing even more financial outlay to get the full benefits of a simple service pack\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6you have a our deepest sympathy. <\/p>\n