- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Heyyo,
Yeah, you see folks.. Once upon a time, on other releases of DirectX, it WOULD install the latest directx, but hardware-wise on cards if they only supported the previous directx version it would only run the games supported in that hardware directx version that the vidcard supports. Thus, a computer can have DX9 installed, but games will run in DX8.. for games that are only set for DX9, the cpu would emulate a lot of effects (usually insept Shader Model stuff like HDR and softshadows.. usually those won't be done via cpu or gpu that doesn't support them.. otherwise the preformance hit would be massive).
Microsoft realized after a lot of angry customers, that dropping support for DX9 on Vista would be a very... VERY bad idea, so they created that DX9 layer on DX10 for Vista, thus games will still run onnit. BUT.. I guess most people didn't notice/realize Microsoft is still getting away with killing off the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for DirectAudio... thus any game that uses directaudio for 3D surround sound or EAX in games that don't do OpenAL would be totally screwed for hardware accelerated audio. I for one, lost 10F/S or so cause of it on the FEAR benchmark.. Creative is capsizing on this issue by releasing aLchemy.. which converts all DirectAudio calls from games into OpenAL hardware-accelerated codes (which... "conveniently" only the Sound Blaster X-Fi series does..) thus hardware-accelerated 3D surround sound audio and EAX could be achieved again.. anywho, I digress... but I do cause I'm pissed off.. cause how many people will be screwed outta current gaming audio glory unless a better solution is achieved.