if there driver were all that is needed, then it would have directX (or the equivalent) built in. Then they'd have to do that for every card and every card vendor. I'm sure the video card vendors wouldn't want that.

And why can't MS improve on Direct X? Is PC hardware inferior to console hardware? I can't believe the abstraction layer needs to be so inefficient. How do we know they haven't just decided that since the hardware is so powerful that they don't have to work so hard on tweaking the software to perfection? Look at those pics at the link I gave...do consoles provide such high res images when you use 4 cards? When you can throw that kind of horsepower at the task, why work so hard to beat the software?

On 3/27/2011 3:25 PM, Steve Tomporowski wrote:
I can agree with you there. I don't know how they would do anything different. What baffles me is what is AMD trying to get at by saying this? Are they going to provide some drivers that allow hardware level access and bypass DirectX. I never really understood why there has to be so many layers of software between the operating system and the hardware--You have Windows, then DirectX, then the video driver. Shouldn't the driver be the interface between Windows and the hardware? Maybe I just don't get it.

On 3/27/2011 2:51 PM, Anthony Q. Martin wrote:
DirectX can either be fixed or replaced, but we don't want to go back to the old days.

Sent from my iPad

On Mar 27, 2011, at 2:22 PM, Steve Tomporowski<[email protected]> wrote:

I do remember back to the days where you really had to read game box to see if your soundcard was supported or if you had to depend on system speaker. Dealing directly with the hardware means that someone comes out the winner, like Creative in the old days. I still have one game (Carnivores 2) which only has 2 selections for 3D display: Software and 3dfx.

More likely they will replace DirectX with something else. Remember when Maximum PC called DirectX 'horribly broken'?

Steve

On 3/27/2011 11:32 AM, Anthony Q. Martin wrote:
Yeah, I read it. However, the first notion that PC hardware is 10x more powerful but not 10x as good looking. That's highly subjective.

Then, the notion of writing directly to the hardware .... crashy, crashy .... that was the whole point of an API in the first place....so you develop a game on the console, and then do device-level programming for different PC hardware? Not gonna happen.

Developers should get MS to improve on DirectX so that those numbers come up!

On 3/27/2011 10:54 AM, Steve Tomporowski wrote:
You need to read the article. The guy from AMD contends that PCs need much more hardware power to get the same/better results than consoles and blames directX. Apparently consoles can run 10k to 20k 'draw calls' per frame compared to 2k to 3k for the PC because directX does not allow mutliple objects per call.

That is , if I've got the gist of the article correct.....;-)

Steve

On 3/27/2011 9:39 AM, Anthony Q. Martin wrote:
I'm not a gamer, but I guess these guys must not be usign DirectX games when they generate these high-res shots on their PCs:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1530070

On 3/27/2011 9:19 AM, Steve Tomporowski wrote:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/03/16/farewell-to-directx/1

This article talks about how, with 10x the power of consoles, PC games only look 1/10 as good due to DirectX.

Steve




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