Good News DirectX 10 Hardware Won't Work with DX10.1

[Dr.Finger]

Oh, those wacky scamps at Microsoft. From The Inquirer (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=41577), via Slashdot (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/11/0524250&from=rss).
Here's the thing. DX10 hardware - such as the GeForce 8800 or the Radeon 2900 - won't work with the new 10.1 features. The 0.1 revision requires completely new hardware for support, thus royally cheesing off many gamers who paid top whack for their new hardware over the last few months on the basis of future game compatibility.Hear that? That's the sound of several million gamers screaming bloody murder after finding out that their expensive new gaming rigs have been rendered obsolete before they ever really had a chance to use it.

But, things aren't all bad.But these gamers shouldn't fret too much - 10.1 adds virtually nothing that they will care about and, more to the point, adds almost nothing that developers are likely to care about. The spec revision basically makes a number of things that are optional in DX10 compulsory under the new standard - such as 32-bit floating point filtering, as opposed to the 16-bit current.So Microsoft made a change to the DX10 standard that not only forces a huge amount of hardware into obsolescence, but adds nothing to the experience, therefore insuring that no developer will implement it? In what way does this make a lick of sense?

[mastergeo7]

owww Shit...
This is one of those times, when i'm glad i don't have money to invest in a DX10 Card.

[Baron Samedi]

Guess you better support MS the other way - go buy a 360. Oh, and don't worry, it will be obsolete in six months with a red ring.

[Exodus]

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SO FUCKING PISSED............................................ .................................................. .................................................. .........................................
It doesn't even fucking matter if I won't really use them I bought this with the full fucking intention of not having to worry about missing out on anything for the next at the LEAST year, most 2 years...

bloody balls I waited 7yrs to upgrade T_T

*takes deep breath*

okay I feel better

[f1sh3r]

if nobody uses 10.1, which is what they seem to be saying will happen, then it won't matter.

[Exodus]

if nobody uses 10.1, which is what they seem to be saying will happen, then it won't matter.

and bill gate said we would never need more than how much 640kb of ram?
:\

[f1sh3r]

and bill gate said we would never need more than how much 640kb of ram?
:\

yeah but in his defense that was a long time ago.

[tiremfej]

I'm not at all happy about this.

[UnderHero5]

That really sucks. The whole "try to keep up with hardware and be outdated within six months" thing is all that drives me away from PC gaming.
Unfortunately, I love it so much that I'll never be able to stop.

Glad I haven't upgraded to DX10 yet. I feel bad for those who did, now.

[DangerousDaze]

if nobody uses 10.1, which is what they seem to be saying will happen, then it won't matter.

Do you expect any versions after 10.1 to be any more compatible with 10 hardware? A dead end is a dead end, even if you haven't quite reached it yet.

[DerwanS]

if nobody uses 10.1, which is what they seem to be saying will happen, then it won't matter.

But later versions of directX will have the 10.1 requirements, and while this one adds nothing special, the later ones might.

Bah, I finally upgrade to Vista and buy an 8800 so I'm ready when 10 is necessary, and they go and do this...:mad:

[JCtheMC]

if nobody uses 10.1, which is what they seem to be saying will happen, then it won't matter.

Exactly. We can only hope that MS goes through a couple more of these revisions before they put out a version that's really attractive for everyone. DX10 is still in it's infancy, by the time the mainstream catches up so devs can consider full dx10 games, the hardcore will want to upgrade again anyway. Even if you're running a quadcore system right now, your PC is not going to be able to keep up with the consoles for the rest of the generation.

[mastergeo7]

I don't get something. If there isn't an improvement over DX10, why do they developed it?

[Banacek]

hahaha, hooray for PC gaming!

[H.Bogard]

Chillax... nothing is obsolete until somebody releases DX10.1 games...

Crysis and DX10 still FTW.

[alleycatsphinx]

Just wait until they start to require that all cards have a tesselator in their pipeline.

Luckily, artists will throw shitfits before that actually gets underway; they aren't very happy about the idea.

[Lutheran]

LOL I just bought a 8800GTS from someone here in the trade section and 1 day later its obsolete :)

[Shjinta]

Wow, what the fuck is wrong with MS? Glad I didn't jump into DX10 yet

[mpsmith]

<-- 8800gtx

[KingGorilla]

In other news, hardware become obsolete in 6 months. Anyone buy one of those early Sony 1080p televisions? How about the early HD-DVD players that cannot get firmware updates due to a lack of a network controller?

[Talanvor]

Well, at least I didn't buy a new rig.

Course I am running a single core A64 on an AGP mobo with a 6800U. Meh.

[Smoof]

I have an 8800GTS 640...

I don't really care about this news.

I'm not expecting the 8800GTS to be great in DX10. I bought it for it's DX9 ability, we'll see how it is in DX10, but I'm not expecting anything amazing from the first gen video cards, so I don't particularly feel ripped off.

[Corngood]

All you DX10 hardware owners have no reason to worry. DX9 software isn't going away any time soon, so by the time games are released that don't support DX10, your GPUs will be very old (will be obsolete in performance, not features).

Every DX update is about giving the developers access to more hardware features, which is the only way for the hardware to evolve. This is no different than any of the other updates, and is probably similar to the introduction of SM3 on DX9.

[Beelzebud]

This is about as significant as the Xbox 360s shipping without the 65nm chips...

BFD

This does not mean the 8800 cards will be obsolete at all. RTFA...

[Vandenh]

Indeed... this really is non-news. DX10.1 will not be in games soon... this is a release so that hardware makers know what to aim for in the next year or so. BTW why did anybody buy a DX10 card with no DX10 games available???? You guys got pulled in by the hype of the card makers... there is no need until a DX10 game comes along.

[TrackZero]

In other news, hardware become obsolete in 6 months. Anyone buy one of those early Sony 1080p televisions? How about the early HD-DVD players that cannot get firmware updates due to a lack of a network controller?

Eh? The HD-DVD players had network/harddrive as part of the spec since day 1, didn't they?

[DangerousDaze]

All you DX10 hardware owners have no reason to worry.

Yeah, they also have no reason to own DX10 hardware.

[Johan]

Gnashing of teeth, mashing of keyboards...

it's times like this when it's good to be a console gamer so that I can play on my RROD machine!

[Fonz]

There is no reason to buy DX10 hardware anyways, all the dx10 hardware right now doesn't run DX10 software at good frame rates, first generation hardware of new DXAPI never runs very well, it runs the previous version of DX pretty good though. Thats why you always wait for the 2nd generation of the new hardware.

On that note I am still running on a Radeon X1950XTX which will be enough to run crysis as a DX9 game. It runs everything so far, waiting to see how bioshock runs in a few weeks.

Rig: Core 2 Duo 6320(OC'd), 2gigs of ram, Radeon X1950XTX(OC'd)

[Grifter]

I stopped reading after the first couple of posts so if this has been said already I apologies.

THE NEWS IS FROM THE INQUIRER!!

seriously guys, if there is one site you all should rally against and not trust it's these guy. I am not saying it's BS but before everyone starts screaming bloody murder lets at least wait to hear something from a reputable source.

EDIT: It seems I miss read the OP and mixed up the sources. You may all continue screaming bloody murder now if you'd like.

[Grimgrock]

I'd say, when it comes to technology news, Slashdot is credible.
Oh, those wacky scamps at Microsoft. From The Inquirer, via Slashdot.

The news was posted on The Inquirer but they found it on Slashdot.

[carnage11]

Is there even any thing out yet that runs DX10? Why does anyone have it yet? I won't upgrade until DX9.0c is completely obsolete. DX10 is still at least 2 years away for me.

[Grifter]

I'd say, when it comes to technology news, Slashdot is credible.


The news was posted on The Inquirer but they found it on Slashdot.

Oh, I read it as being the other way around. I guess it's time to edit again.

[mkelehan]

This is why I do all my gaming on consoles. A few hundred dollars every 5 years, and you're always playing the games just as the developer wants.

[KingGorilla]

Eh? The HD-DVD players had network/harddrive as part of the spec since day 1, didn't they?

It is one of them, may have been some early Blu-Ray players. Really the same difference, early adopters of high end hardware got screwed a tad. Early adopters of Plasma TVs were treated to high chances of burn in, limited ability to view from any angles, and incredibly short life-spans. Early LCD really suffered from "the screen door effect." This attitude of "don't you feel dumb for buying that." Is part of everything that you purchase.

[Johnny Internet]

lol, the inquirer

[Zeal]

this is because developers realized that DX10 basically sucked and provided nothing new (besides some stupid ass sparkling water effects) to the graphics experience. now microsoft is attempting to compensate by redoing the entire foundation.

[noxa]

Wow, I'm surprised at how many of you people care about this. Most of you don't even seem to understand what it implies, let alone how it affects you.

The reason they did this was to create a new baseline. For example, to say you support DX9 you must support a certain minimum shader model, set of texture pipelines, etc. When developing game code, it makes it easier to know that if your target machine says it's running 9.0, you'll have at least X, Y and Z. This 10.1 update is the same kind of thing: if your target hardware supports 10.0, you run with a certain codepath. If it supports 10.1, you know that there is a certain set of supported functions that you can code/create content for.

It's something that helps all of us gamers, because it allows for a more console-like development experience: the devs can set reasonable expectations of their target hardware and develop something for that. If you didn't have these requirements, you'd end up with video cards that didn't support the latest shader model, didn't have enough texture pipelines, etc. That's not good.

[KingGorilla]

Wow, I'm surprised at how many of you people care about this. Most of you don't even seem to understand what it implies, let alone how it affects you.


Mostly it turned into a chance for some folks to spout off "PC sux, console is teh R0XXorz."

[dfr]

someone smack me so i can finally stop laughing :/

[ElectricMonk]

Meh people are blowing this way out of proportion. No directx cards have ever been forwards-compatible with any direct x version.

Most of the directx features that are added with 10.1 seem to be quality control features, so you would buy a dx10.1 card to have a higher quality card period and it's not going to render your gf8800 obsolete.

The most interesting feature is being able to compress textures on the video card, which could improve load times quite a bit.

[dirtbag]

It's not like our cards won't work with DX10, and it looks like developers aren't going to do anything with the new features, so original DX10 hardware is not obsolete.

Nevertheless, this is a complete ass-bandit move by MS. Are we sure they've been getting EA execs, and not Sony execs?

[aj1pso]

Seriously though, this is why consoles r0xx0r and whatnot.

[Darcydian]

Wasn't it DX9 or 8b or something that came out litterally 2 weeks after Nvidia released it's GeForce4xxx series that was the next big thing, but didn't support it?

I got boned on that one

[Varsity]

I don't see what anyone is getting worked up about. This means nothing. Developers can and will quite happily include 10 and 10.1 paths.

[Chainblast]

It doesn't really matter how useless DX10 currently is, what matters is principle and mindset. How can PC gamers feel secure about their purchases knowing that MS has the means and inclination to pull the rug from under you? It's true PC gaming requires a never ending quest to upgrade, but the next new thing generally doesn't render what came before it obsolete.

If these are the kinds of decisions we can look forward to from MS in the future why support a platform that doesn't support you?

[alexander|thegreatest]

All this excitement is incredibly retarded. Most of the features that were made compulsory are already supported by the available DX10 cards, and the rest are pretty much miscellanous.

[KingGorilla]

If these are the kinds of decisions we can look forward to from MS in the future why support a platform that doesn't support you?
Are you this mad that your ceramic oven of a 360 is the ugly sister of a new one with a cooler running chip and an HDMI port?

[Varsity]

It's true PC gaming requires a never ending quest to upgrade

I'm tired of this. No it is not. I've bought two computers (one off the shelf and one in parts) in the last six years and have never found a game I can't play because of my specs.

[shnastybiznastic]

You know, things like this are why I espouse openGL.

[DangerousDaze]

I'm tired of this. No it is not. I've bought two computers (one off the shelf and one in parts) in the last six years and have never found a game I can't play because of my specs.

That doesn't mean anything. I could buy just one, today, and make the same claim but that doesn't invalidate Chainblast's point.

[Pluvious]

Man I'm so glad I didn't jump into Vista and replace my video card. (again) I already swore off PC gaming and my current rig is my LAST rig. This news just makes me happy I got out of the PC upgrade hell. I played that game for quite awhile.. but with the latest video cards costing $600 (times two.. SLI) and the new power requirements (1000Watts) told me the writing is on the wall. MS is trying to make the 360 more and more appealing for gamers and screw PC gamers in the long run.

[Dr.Finger]

I don't see what anyone is getting worked up about. This means nothing. Developers can and will quite happily include 10 and 10.1 paths.Microsoft has spent most of the last year or so telling us how Vista in general and DX10 in particular would improve the gaming experience so much, then they pull something like this that completely undermines that effort. In the long run is this a huge deal? No, at this point no one cares about 10.1, there is nothing in it that gamers or devs want. But what happens when 10.2 or 10.3 comes out with something good, and all of the people that upgraded their systems to X are told that X is no longer good enough. If this was so important then MS and GFW should have made it a requirement from Day 1 instead of this late to the game stealth announcement.

[KingGorilla]

You know, things like this are why I espouse openGL.

A-fucking-Men.

[Varsity]

That doesn't mean anything. I could buy just one, today, and make the same claim but that doesn't invalidate Chainblast's point.

Buying one today clearly doesn't, but being more than comfortable with two over six years clearly does.

But what happens when 10.2 or 10.3 comes out with something good, and all of the people that upgraded their systems to X are told that X is no longer good enough.

If, not when. MS haven't made that mistake this time, and there's no reason to suggest they'll be stupid enough to make it if/when any further revisions come out.

[Pokute]

The new directX 10 revision is pretty expected in my eyes. And I expect a lot of new DirectX revisions now with 10 being out than before DirectX 10. It's mainly because of device capabilities (devcaps) which DirectX 10 threw away. I'll post more detailed description about this later.

[H.Bogard]

rs or devs want. But what happens when 10.2 or 10.3 comes out with something good, and all of the people that upgraded their systems to X are told that X is no longer good enough.



See : Gefoce 6800, SM 3.0 and DirectX 9.0 C

[markster3000]

Wow, I'm surprised at how many of you people care about this. Most of you don't even seem to understand what it implies, let alone how it affects you.

The reason they did this was to create a new baseline. For example, to say you support DX9 you must support a certain minimum shader model, set of texture pipelines, etc. When developing game code, it makes it easier to know that if your target machine says it's running 9.0, you'll have at least X, Y and Z. This 10.1 update is the same kind of thing: if your target hardware supports 10.0, you run with a certain codepath. If it supports 10.1, you know that there is a certain set of supported functions that you can code/create content for.

It's something that helps all of us gamers, because it allows for a more console-like development experience: the devs can set reasonable expectations of their target hardware and develop something for that. If you didn't have these requirements, you'd end up with video cards that didn't support the latest shader model, didn't have enough texture pipelines, etc. That's not good.

Quoted for rationality.

Plus, it's not like this hasn't happened before. Recall DX8.0 & DX8.1. People with DX8.0 cards could still play Half-Life 2. Maybe it looked slightly prettier on a card with 8.1 support, but that was it!

No games are ever going to require 10.1. They will all have a 10.0 codepath in addition to a 10.1 codepath.

If you bought a 10.0 card, then this comes with the territory of going to the cutting edge.

To call 10.0 cards "obsolete" is a gross overstatement.

[lockwoodx]

Good thing I'm skipping vista

[Sarconix]

This is all somewhat amusing...

I was at the "Introduction to Direct3D 10" course at SIGGRAPH last Sunday where they described what 10.1 has to offer. After that section of the course, I walked up to a microphone and specifically asked the presenter from MS whether any existing cards would support D3D 10.1. His answer was a predictable and not-so-helpful "talk to the hardware vendors."

10.1 has some interesting things, but as the article says, games don't have to use these things. They are mostly just tightening up what the hardware must support, features which are currently optional.

[MrE]

Gah, this is a non issue. The changes to 10.1 simply call for a different code path if you hardware supports a given feature. Big deal. It doesn't obsolete anything. Its not like you upgrade to dx10.1 and now your 8800GTX is a paperweight. This is a normal baseline.

[Varsity]

Wow, I'm surprised at how many of you people care about this. Most of you don't even seem to understand what it implies, let alone how it affects you.

The reason they did this was to create a new baseline. For example, to say you support DX9 you must support a certain minimum shader model, set of texture pipelines, etc. When developing game code, it makes it easier to know that if your target machine says it's running 9.0, you'll have at least X, Y and Z. This 10.1 update is the same kind of thing: if your target hardware supports 10.0, you run with a certain codepath. If it supports 10.1, you know that there is a certain set of supported functions that you can code/create content for.

It's something that helps all of us gamers, because it allows for a more console-like development experience: the devs can set reasonable expectations of their target hardware and develop something for that. If you didn't have these requirements, you'd end up with video cards that didn't support the latest shader model, didn't have enough texture pipelines, etc. That's not good.

Someone replace the OP with this.

[Adam Blue]

Am I missing something? Isn't this how it has always been?

[Pokute]

While some people here are writing sensible stuff, some are submitting to the senstationalism and screaming bloody murder for making their old cards obsolete.

To understand the reason of DirectX10.1, we must look at DirectX10.
From what I've read, DirectX10 was a pretty major change of pace for developers compared to DirectX9.

Not sure if it's all factual but this is what I've understood:

For some 3d card to be DirectX9 compliant, you had to have a pretty standard amount of features supported, having certain capabilities was required. And the standard amount of features was quite limited. There were ton of functions that many developers wanted for their games/products but they weren't required in DirectX9. Therefore some 3d cards had different features from eachother.

To use these features, you had to check device capabilities of the card (DEVCAPS) and take the capabilities into account when writing rendering code. When there was a feature that a dev wanted to use but was not widely supported in hardware, a different code was needed for that hardware. Different hw may have had different ways to obtaining a single result so that would have needed to take into account too.

Now DX10 has a LOT more strict and wide feature requirements. If you don't comply 100% to the requirements, you're not certified to call the HW as DX10.

This results in almost any older cards not being DX10.1 compliant (as long as the specification is not locked down, it could change to make an existing part non-compliant).

Now that we know this, do you think that game developers will make games that support only the later 10.1 version and not the earlier-widely supported DX10? Especially as the differences are rather small. The DX9 to DX10 difference is many times bigger than 10.0 and 10.1.

Mark my words, as long as DX9 is supported, no games will drop the DX10 support if they develop primarily for a later version of DX10. The existing amount of prospective customers with DX10 cards would make such a choice very stupid in market point of view in most normal situations.

The 10.0 cards are about as obsolete as were the 9.0b cards when 9.0c came out. And considering the strict hw requirements for DX10.0 cards, it's easier to make code for them and therefore they are more likely to be supported.

[Stooby]

and bill gate said we would never need more than how much 640kb of ram?
:\

God people, stop quoting this. He never said that. Microsoft were the ones pushing IBM to adopt more than 512k of RAM because they didn't think it would be enough. He told them to go to 640k of ram because that could be enough for as much as 4 years. Bill Gates may be a lot of things, but he is not short sighted. And he did understand the nature of hardware, even back then.

[carnage11]

OMGZ! Console is teh r0xx0r! PC is teh suck!!11 Consoles FTW!


Disclaimer:

Sorry I felt there was too many non-biased non-troll like posts being made, so I thought I would go the other way to even it out. Because, what's a thread......without a troll?:D

[Pokute]

OMGZ! Console is teh r0xx0r! PC is teh suck!!11 Consoles FTW!


Disclaimer:

Sorry I felt there was too many non-biased non-troll like posts being made, so I thought I would go the other way to even it out. Because, what's a thread......without a troll?:D

While trolls may have been too (:-)) few, there definitely has been enough misinformation floating around to assure that the viewer definitely is reading the internet.

[timmyd]

You know, things like this are why I espouse openGL.

Indeed!

This whole Vista/DX10 has really fucked us MS flight simmers too.
Hehe. So I spent like $3000 on a new toy this weekend. It wasn't a computer, so suck that you stupid computer companies.
Fix this completely crazy upgrade mess before I forget about PC gaming.
And you can spin this all you want. But $3000 didn't go into a new computer/OS/Game like it normally would, and that hurts.

[D.D.D.]

Shit like that was the main reason I stuck to consoles for gaming many moons ago... :mad:

[Hemalin]

So what games will not run on DX10 hardware?


I fail to see how the hardware is obsolete when DX10.1 isn't being used by anyone.

[Uniqueusername]

It looks to me like MS are mostly making optional components mandatory in 10.1 to give the hardware vendors some warning about what's coming.

They will be using these things in the next major release of DX, so they want the cards to start implementing them now. Hopeully, that means the switch to DX 11 will be mostly painless, since most of the cards on the market should be almost compatible anyway.

Nothing wrong with giving advanced warning, although MS could have handled it a lot better.

[MacD]

Even if you're running a quadcore system right now, your PC is not going to be able to keep up with the consoles for the rest of the generation.

Bullshit; if you're running quad core with a 7800 equivalent, you already run a better rig than any console on the market, graphically and cpu-wise (or texel-wise and flop-wise, for the slightly more technically inclined).

@Zeal: wow, you're on a troll today. DX10 has many fine things, including geometry shaders and an updated driver model which makes displaying more than 500 objects in one scene feasable. DX10 is sweet. Too bad it only comes with Vista, so I won't be using it...ever.

As for the topic at hand; who cares? Lost Planet for the pc is a dx10 game...but I play it just as fine in DX9. As people have pointed out, the dx10.1 req's don't make old cards obsolete, they just create a new standard for newer cards to adhere to. Whoever put up that sensationalist headline at the Inquirer is an idiot who has no understanding of DX and doesn't realise how any DX revision has worked. Which is strange, since the spec has changed a lot from DX 5 to 6 to 7 to 8 to 9 to 10 (including all previous and sub versions) and has been updated like this since forever.

[Disgustipated]

Bullshit; if you're running quad core with a 7800 equivalent, you already run a better rig than any console on the market, graphically and cpu-wise (or texel-wise and flop-wise, for the slightly more technically inclined).



JCTheMC's quote is hilarious and so misinformed.

[Kefkataran]

Inquirer = no.

First thing I learned posting news at EvAv.

[Watership]

BTW why did anybody buy a DX10 card with no DX10 games available???? You guys got pulled in by the hype of the card makers... there is no need until a DX10 game comes along.


Have you met any PC hardware junkies before? I know a few guys who never close their PC cases they're upgrading so much. It's part of the culture.

[Darkkoji]

This helps MS how again exactly?

[Frogleg Special]

Microsoft needs to check its own in the mirror: either leave video card API to Open GL or start taking charge on PC gaming seriously.

[NightRain]

and bill gate said we would never need more than how much 640kb of ram?
:\

He never actually said that. That is a myth, urban legend, whatever you want to call it. Find me a place where he said "640kb of RAM is all you'll ever need" in print.

[51|RandoM]

Doesn't bother me, technology marches on. This is no different than cards supporting older shader models, etc.

All Microsoft has really done is insure that almost nobody uses DX10.1 in their software.

[abso]

Microsoft has spent most of the last year or so telling us how Vista in general and DX10 in particular would improve the gaming experience so much, then they pull something like this that completely undermines that effort. In the long run is this a huge deal? No, at this point no one cares about 10.1, there is nothing in it that gamers or devs want. But what happens when 10.2 or 10.3 comes out with something good, and all of the people that upgraded their systems to X are told that X is no longer good enough. If this was so important then MS and GFW should have made it a requirement from Day 1 instead of this late to the game stealth announcement.

It is very rare for there to be new hardware requirements for .1 revisions to an API, for exactly the reasons outlined throughout this thread. This is very likely something that should have gone into 10.0, but was late for whatever reason. I wish I had paid more attention at siggraph last week where they talked about it. Basically, they are just trying to get what should have been in there already so that .2 or .3 don't require hardware changes.

In closing, opengl rules.

[ElektroDragon]

That'll teach you idiots to spend $500 on graphics cards instead of buying a 360 with tons of games. I've been there, I've paid $500 for a graphics card, and I am NEVER being that STUPID again!

[cppcrusader]

BTW why did anybody buy a DX10 card with no DX10 games available????

At work I put in a purchase order for new rigs with 8800 GT's because they were actually cheaper than the high end 7900's and 7950's. Plus at the time 7900's weren't in stock.

[Karmakaze]

Man, this is such a non-issue, the Inquirer has it all wrong (and please RTFA, the primary source is the Inq, not Slashdot). It doesn't "require new hardware", it just requires said hardware to support a couple things.

One is 32-bit floating point filtering, which a quick google search proves the 8800 already has (http://www.nvidia.com/page/8800_tech_specs.html).

The other is 4xAA anti-aliasing, which has been supported by Nvidia since, I believe, the Geforce2.

edit: hmm, once again the Inq has taken a kernel of truth and shat on it. Looks like it won't be backwards compatible (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2164632,00.asp), but not for any of the reasons the Inq said.

[Dirty Harry]

yeah but in his defense that was a long time ago.

and he actually didnt say that

[Deathwave]

The more I see this stuff, the more I think Microsoft wants the PC to die, as far as being a major supporter of games. The more people get screwed over by the constant insanity of hardware updates, software fuckups, and the general insanity of the PC rollercoaster, the more they look at a 4-5 year life cycle of a console and start to shake.

I mean, I've done it. I love my PC, and there are games that will never come out on consoles that I get a major shudder...the good kind...from. Hearts of Iron (hardcore WW2 simulation) will never be put out on a console. Day of Defeat (a 5...6...7....? year old mod for Half-Life 1 that still boasts tons of servers and is still great fun...for 10 bucks?!), will never be put out on a console. Freedom Force (so far inside a niche that it died a slow death with it's sequel) will never be put out on a console. Combat Mission will never be put out on a console, and neither will Rome: Total War, TOEE, Conquest of the Aegean, etc.

Of course, the whole point of this is not that I yearn to play Combat Mission: Afrika Korps on a 360...but that no game even remotely close to it will ever be put out on any console...ever.

And that's the rub, isn't it. PC's offer niche titles...specialized games for a wide variety of players. Consoles offer the very good high profile PC games, as well as a flood of similar games...often not showing much innovation in setting or gameplay.

But, I do tire of buying PC's, and having them be a pile of crap in 12-18 months. It's old...and that's why I think that the tradeoff of not being able to play any niche games on the PC is worth it to not have to worry about upgrading again in 3-5 years. It's not like hardware upgrades are hard, it's just that as I get older I get more and more jaded by PC gaming. Well, at least gaming on the bleeding edge.

I think I'll always keep a PC around to play older games, I just don't see myself keeping up with the latest and greatest anymore. I just don't care about it as much as I used to...partly due to there being not that many games that I see on the horizon for the PC that I'm all that thrilled about.

I could easily see myself as a Wii60 owner, and being happy with that.

[KlausFlouride]

The more I see this stuff, the more I think Microsoft wants the PC to die, as far as being a major supporter of games. The more people get screwed over by the constant insanity of hardware updates, software fuckups, and the general insanity of the PC rollercoaster, the more they look at a 4-5 year life cycle of a console and start to shake.

I mean, I've done it. I love my PC, and there are games that will never come out on consoles that I get a major shudder...the good kind...from. Hearts of Iron (hardcore WW2 simulation) will never be put out on a console. Day of Defeat (a 5...6...7....? year old mod for Half-Life 1 that still boasts tons of servers and is still great fun...for 10 bucks?!), will never be put out on a console. Freedom Force (so far inside a niche that it died a slow death with it's sequel) will never be put out on a console. Combat Mission will never be put out on a console, and neither will Rome: Total War, TOEE, Conquest of the Aegean, etc.

Of course, the whole point of this is not that I yearn to play Combat Mission: Afrika Korps on a 360...but that no game even remotely close to it will ever be put out on any console...ever.

And that's the rub, isn't it. PC's offer niche titles...specialized games for a wide variety of players. Consoles offer the very good high profile PC games, as well as a flood of similar games...often not showing much innovation in setting or gameplay.

But, I do tire of buying PC's, and having them be a pile of crap in 12-18 months. It's old...and that's why I think that the tradeoff of not being able to play any niche games on the PC is worth it to not have to worry about upgrading again in 3-5 years. It's not like hardware upgrades are hard, it's just that as I get older I get more and more jaded by PC gaming. Well, at least gaming on the bleeding edge.

I think I'll always keep a PC around to play older games, I just don't see myself keeping up with the latest and greatest anymore. I just don't care about it as much as I used to...partly due to there being not that many games that I see on the horizon for the PC that I'm all that thrilled about.

I could easily see myself as a Wii60 owner, and being happy with that.

The PC can also do a boat load of things that no console can.

[Deathwave]

My response was in reference to comparing games on the PC and consoles. I know a PC can do more but that wasn't the point of my post.

[kraemer]

Hey kids, I don't think this is correct. The Nvidia 8X is a "stream processor" chip, in that it has an array of stream processors and no DX10 hardwired functionality in it. This means that they could just change the microcode in the drivers without having to specifically make a "DX 10.1" chip.

[lion2]

He never said that.

and bill gate said we would never need more than how much 640kb of ram?
:\

[TrainwreckX]

owww Shit...
This is one of those times, when i'm glad i don't have money to invest in a DX10 Card.

................................... I just bought a $400 8800 GTS last week..................

[kurosaki]

well i guess this is good to know now, I almost bought a new PC last week. retarded of Microsoft to do something like this knowing the amount of people that have upgraded their PC's recently. Guess I'll be waiting to here more stupid news from Microsoft before I go and buy a new rig.