What is Digg?Sponsored by Travelzoo
Take Advantage of Ridiculously Low Holiday Airfares view!
travelzoo.com - Flights $52 and up for Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Year. But move on it now.
132 Comments
- shifty2, on 11/13/2007, -3/+91The question that lingers is, what is to blame? Video card hardware design? Video card drivers? DX10 itself? Game developers not coding DX10 correctly/efficiently?
All this hating on DX10 needs to have a justified cause. - Hangender, on 11/15/2007, -5/+40If you noticed, it says BETA on the DX10 option. Hmmm beta I wonder what that word means.
- loki49152, on 11/14/2007, -11/+39You have attempted to render a pixel.
Allow or Deny? - frgmstr, on 11/14/2007, -9/+37I have to say that it feels like we have been on an anti-DX10 crusade lately, but we find that continually DX10's burden seems to deliver little if anything other than decreased performance. :( Yeah, we too remember how good it was supposed to be and how much faster it was than DX9 running the same code? http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTA0NSwyLC ... I guess we will just have to wait till we see native DX10 coded games, because porting and patching does not seem to be the answer.
- Shorties, on 11/13/2007, -2/+24I don't get this analogy, Greyhounds are dogs and they are pretty damn fast, wouldn't snail have been a better fit, or maybe a turtle... I like turtles...
- frgmstr, on 11/13/2007, -3/+24Too bad there are "no OpenGL titles. id makes a mean 3D engine, but their content has been waning. And honestly, their new fps/racing game that they showed off at QuakeCon, left me a bit flat.
- borninda818, on 11/13/2007, -5/+23Nothing is wrong....just give developers some time to learn the new system instead of rushing to push out poorly developed games. Just look at Crysis.
- UtopiaInTheSky, on 11/13/2007, -1/+18Is it really DX10 this time or can we use a config hack to get DX10 effects in Windows XP?
- chugger1992, on 11/13/2007, -4/+21I don't know about you guys, but those "minor" upgrdes seem pretty resource intensive to me.
Plus, didn't we get the same hit going from DX8 to DX9? - inactive, on 11/14/2007, -13/+29Less frames per second for better graphics is not a failure! It's called better graphics put more strain on your hardware causing your hardware to put out less frames per second!
Guess what we have known this breakthrough understanding since the 50's. Next person that bitches about better software being slow on older hardware gets decked in the face by me. SHUT THE ***** UP. - UtopiaInTheSky, on 11/13/2007, -1/+16Which explains why people on XP using the DX10 hack get more frame rates than Vista users? Oh, wait... That's the opposite of what should be happening. Your logic fails, sir.
- skoles, on 11/13/2007, -0/+12One cannot simply patch DX10 into Mordor!
- tcpip4lyfe, on 11/13/2007, -1/+12Well then...that settles it.
- MacSuxWindozSux, on 11/13/2007, -4/+14So if I make a Dx10 game and it's slow, I can say DX10 fails again?
Qualitative assessments of "continually DX10's burden seems to deliver little if anything" don't really say anything. Clearly if you looked at the specs, it's a whole different story.
Having an openGL market dominance would be much better, but it still sucks when people decide something is bad, and only after try to think of reasons why. - barius, on 11/13/2007, -0/+10I don't know about you, but I don't remember there being nearly a 55% performance gap from DX8 to DX9 in the *highest-end* cards of the day. There was some, but it was on the scale of 10-15%. Also, I do remember there being fairly significant improvement to visual quality (much better AA, a lot more polygons and textures, etc.)
Still, I don't blame DX10 yet, I'm still pretty convinced this was caused by poor programming by the LOTRO developers. Time will tell. - inactive, on 11/13/2007, -2/+12OpenGL would be bad because then they can easily port games to many other platforms. It's much better (for Microsoft) to stick to a platform-specific hack like DirectX.
- inactive, on 11/13/2007, -7/+16Erm, the comparison clearly shows that DX10 has better graphics quality. Why are you surprised that it hits the performance a bit. That's to be expected.
- inactive, on 11/13/2007, -2/+11Gamespot did look. DX10 didn't gain Crysis anything there either. http://www.gamespot.com/features/6182140/index.htm ...
- barius, on 11/13/2007, -0/+8The authors of the article seemed to put the blame on the LOTRO developers, and I think they probably have it right. I have a hard time believing DX10 itself could cause such huge frame rate drops. More likely, the LOTRO developers got carried away with implementing poorly coded effects that they thought would be really cool, but then they didn't have time to clean up before the release deadline.
- MioTheGreat, on 11/13/2007, -1/+8I've had graphics drivers actually crash, and recover, while playing games on Vista. The game flickered, and continued as normal (It was Civ4, by the way.)
That would have simply BSODed on XP. Go Vista! - lemz, on 11/14/2007, -8/+15This title fails. Stupid.
- grumpyrain, on 11/13/2007, -0/+7Yes turtles FTW!!1!
PENDOWN
FORWARD 100
LEFT 120
FORWARD 100
LEFT 120
FORWARD 100
PENUP
There you go, first polygon done.
Take that DX10. - banmaster, on 11/13/2007, -2/+9The problem as I see it is that hardware is kind of at the same level of sophistication as the GeForce FX5000 series was when it was the 1st to support DX9.
Look at just how long it took for cards able to run DX9 content came out, and how much longer ity actually took for properly native (not patched) DX9 games to arrive.
Just give it time guys. - barius, on 11/13/2007, -3/+10"Next person that bitches about better software being slow on older hardware ..."
Uh, the comparison was using the best gaming rig you can get today...did you even read the article?
/Bitch slaps you - barius, on 11/13/2007, -1/+7So you admit that your statement was entirely wrong? The authors of the article tested the best hardware of the day, hardware that is newer (8800 Ultra - May 2007) than DX10 itself (w/ Vista - Jan. 2007), and there was a massive drop in frame rate. Thus, the statement "better software on older hardware" is entirely inaccurate.
Note that I am not saying DX10 is necessarily the culprit, I personally think poor coding had more to do with it.
/Bitch slap for the win - MacSuxWindozSux, on 11/13/2007, -1/+7I was think of benefits for the people playing the games. You're right though.
- sauron256, on 11/14/2007, -7/+13BREAKING: Visual enhancements cause lower framerate in game.
- ericthesalmon, on 11/13/2007, -1/+7Yeah, this little linguistic anomaly has me much more bothered than DX10
- greevar, on 11/13/2007, -4/+10Deny... BSOD
- barius, on 11/13/2007, -2/+7"A bit"??
Did you read the article? - inactive, on 11/13/2007, -0/+5Psssh...reading articles is for old people and other weirdos with attention spans.
Oh look, something shiny. - nuvem, on 11/13/2007, -0/+5For the past few years OpenGL has been in extension hell (for those that don't know, OpenGL implements advanced features, often with different implementations for ATI and NV, with it taking a while to get a standard ARB extension).
That said, it's improving rapidly. OpenGL 2.0 is a big step up in solidifying a DX9 featureset, and 3.0 stands to bring GL to the level of DX10, without the legacy extension mess. If ATI and NV back it, I expect to see cross-platform developers switching back. - lessew, on 11/13/2007, -1/+6DX10... I'd be more inclined to lean toward Vista being the dog.
- nuvem, on 11/13/2007, -1/+61. You are correct, DX10 could run on Vista, all they'd have to do is completely rewrite the XP video driver model. It's not only easy, but it makes business sense too!
2. Actually, it's the game developers who pushed for this change. Supporting a multitude of video cards with differing feature sets makes game development even more difficult than it already is.
3. *****, please come back when you have a clue. Geometry shaders are not a short-cut, stream out is not a short-cut, this is a major architectural change, the results of which really won't be visible until the second generation of DX10 games. - Hickeroar, on 11/13/2007, -1/+6Not to mention that DX10 allows developers to use the GPU for physics calculations too. DX10 is a really neat API and its true capabilities are just being skimmed in Crysis. People are FAR too hard on it for it being so young.
- Tenoq, on 11/13/2007, -0/+5What!?! We've been waiting FOREVER for a re-hashed release of the 8800 series?!? The replacement card for the 8800GTX has been rumoured since April... how has the market been AWESOME? nVidia has been stalling because AMD is not offering any real high-end competition at the moment.
- neko, on 11/14/2007, -5/+10The hating comes from:
- Microsoft claiming DX10 is only possible on Vista, which is ridiculous.
- DX10 setting the requirements of the graphics hardware. I hear about "DX10 cards", and bluemist says above that an 8800GT apparently won't be a DX10.1 card. This is the opposite way round! MS' marketing-speak has managed to turn things upside-down: it's the HARDWARE that has the capabilities, and the graphics API that should provide access to them. A 8800GT is exactly as awesome, regardless of whether your software talks to it using DX9, DX10, or GL. You only need to consult the Crysis "Very High Detail" hack to prove this.
- All DirectX10 does is add short-cuts for the game developers to code up some nice effects in less development time. That's it. Somehow, it's been blown out of all proportion and branded as miracle software that makes hardware do things it couldn't do otherwise. It's not. - inactive, on 11/13/2007, -0/+5Dude, you and I and maybe the 3 other people here over 30 will be the only ones to get that joke.
Turtle Logo FTW. - inactive, on 11/13/2007, -0/+4uziko is the kind of reader that tabloid papers love, they read the title and nothing more.
- barius, on 11/13/2007, -1/+5Longer than the 5 years to code Vista? Not likely.
Also, the graphics stack would have changed whether they implemented DX10 or not. The changes to the stack were to (A) implement DRM into the graphics sub-systems, and (B) to provide a 3D rendering framework for the desktop. None of these changes were necessary to implement DX10.
FYI, the correct answer was "the driver architecture". The driver framework changed, hence the reason Vista needed all those new drivers (and the hell that came when it was released without them). DX10 was written to make use of the new framework (remember, DX10 is very closely tied to the hardware and therefore is also closely tied to the drivers). However, there is absolutely no reason why MS *had* to tie DX10 directly to the driver framework. They could have abstracted this dependency with minimal effort, but they'd rather force you to upgrade. - asskey, on 11/13/2007, -2/+6I gave Shockolate to my dog. Now it runs as fast as KENYANS!
- tsotha, on 11/14/2007, -1/+5There's no way to tell why the game performs poorly, even if it really does on everybody's system. It may simply have been rushed out the door without performance tuning.
- MioTheGreat, on 11/13/2007, -5/+9Porting Microsoft's implementation of DX10 to XP would literally require transforming huge chunks of XP into Vista.
- revenant, on 11/13/2007, -1/+5lotro had performance issues in beta and after release on ultra high details.. crashing, bad performance, stuttering.. turbine shoved it out the door like that.. I am guessing they did the same with the dx10 component for it.
- luet, on 11/13/2007, -3/+6Slow as a dog... what? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Dogs are pretty fast runners. So DX10 is as slow as a dog AND also fails... are you trying to say that DirectX10 is supposed to run slow? I guess that makes sense, what with the corporate concept of built-in obsolescence a main component in all consumer products.
- Murdats, on 11/13/2007, -1/+4but you arent one of those are you?
- barius, on 11/13/2007, -1/+4Not when the developers have a deadline. In the real world bling sells, so bling gets money put into it. Unfortunately, too many games are nothing but bling these days (I consider ES4: Oblivion to be one of them. ES3: Morrowind had way better gameplay IMHO.)
- joeanon, on 11/13/2007, -1/+4Yea Digg is becoming a bit irrelevant with it's zealous anti-MS digging. People never make good points, they just bash things.
Well I bet vista DX10 performance runs WIN32 games better than ***** ass TRANSGAMING. What to talk about slow people. Linux gaming is utterly worthless EVEN compared to Dx10. OpenGL needs to either get funding or die and stop being a tease of an API.
Developers want API suties, not highly simlpified API's. That ***** is for John Carmack and John Carmack alone. If he wants to keep OpenGL alive, fine for him, but until OpenGL gets some development going on WHY would you expect people to use it ?
There is a reason people went to DX, because OpenGL isn't enough. You need API's for every aspect of gaming and NOBODY in their right minds wants to piece together a bunch of open source API's. The should be bundled together or they will be highly confusing compared to DX style gaming development.
Talk all you want, but there is NO serious competition to DX. Nobody is making ANY serious effort to reproduce a suite of API's that has proven HIGHLY useful to the vast majority of developers. ALL of which could have went with OpenGL, but didn't.
Did you guys ever play NWN2. I guess you think it was slow because of DX. NO people, buggy games are slow because they are badly written because they are rushed and not properly tested on anything but high end hardware. That's pretty much HOW PC games are released and every coulpe titles perform like complete CRAP.
The vast likelyhood as we all know is that the performance problem have little to nothing to do with DX and EVERYTHING to do with the actual game code.
Since you fanboys already know that. It makes it clear your just waging an anti-MS campaign and have little substance behind your statements. DX10 will probably be slower, but graphics cards are only gettnig faster, so I don't see the big deal. Every updated version of an app is more bloated and slower even on Linux and Mac. That's just the law of diminishing returns. They make apps slower because CPU power compensates and rapid application development does not mean efficienct, so there is little need to focus on performance.
From the REAL benchmarks DX10 is not significantly slower, but it has MAJOR quality improvement on the new features it supports.
Cmon I'm sure every Linux fanboy and their mom cried when DX9 came out also. You guys are just mad you can't manage to revese engineer DX API's, though even if you did, the performance would still suck overall since it's not optimized for Linux. Until we cross platform, which will proably run slower also, Linux will be crippled for gaming. Developes are NEVER going to just come to Linux. You have to build awesome tools for them like MS does.
Most game makers don't care if your OS is stable, just that it plays their game. Develoeprs are not here to help out Linux if linux can't put the basic foundation in place to make game development as easy as it is on Win32. John Carmack isn't going to prop up linux gaming forever.
Sooo.. whats it all matter anyway? It's not as if developers can't just pick DX9 or OpenGL if DX10 is so bad. Why can't MS make a bad product now and then, they produce millions of lines of code a year, probably easily more than any other single company on the planet. Seems to me they had a bad year, but when you look at all their other years, they are doing just fine and they have a long lead on the compeition.
Right now Linux and Mac are bragging about their OS's, but when it comes down to it noone with a clue really cares about eye candy GUI features.They just want to click on their app and have it run. The world simply has no practical use for 3D desktops just like they have no use for VR eyeclasses. These are ideas that appeal to computer geeks, but in practical application the average person is not all that interested.
However, put anyone in front of a freshly installed OS and they may find it impressive, they may even think they want to switch, but until they actually switch, they have no idea what they are getting into. The choise to switch triggered by eye candy is likely not going to ultimately reward the user.
In other words. I could talk my GF into switching, but once she did and realize everything she couldn't do anymore she would want Windows back. At first however she always loves Linux, but in the long run using it is too difficult for the average person to switch.
I've tried it, doesn't work. People want the apps they are usd to. For people with very light PC usage Linux may be fine, but if you do a lot with your computer you likely have no advantage to switch. In fact seeing as MS is a highly profitable American industry and we are on the verge of economic crisis, supporting MS is still the better idea. Mac also, though I think most people would be over paying for light computer use on a Mac. The type of people looking for a 200 dollar PC are not looking at Macs. Those type of people should almost certainly be on Windows. They have the least knowledge, least money and likey the highest expectations. Linux will disapoint them compared to Windows.
Imagine a poor minority family wasting their money on a Linux PC when they could get all the verstility and gaming of Windows for 50 bucks more. They are NOT going to be happy when their kids go over their poor friends house and they have a Windows PC playing games and all they have is a Linux system with some card games or other useless crap. If I was their kid I'd be pissed we got a Linux system.
Oh lets sit around and admire it's stability and securty. NO lets watch the kids zone out on 3D games or even the parents. There is just NO realistic way Linux can be a desktop PC without gaming. Your just cutting off a MAJOR selling point of the PC. People will buy Linux thinking it can play games like Windows because... that's what computers do.
It's totally *****. Linux should never be on a low end PC. It's not made for low end people or famalies. It's made for PC geeks and power users. The cheapness is not Linux at all, but the ***** hardware it comes with. If I found a poor soul with this system I'd put windows on it for them. Not I'm sure it's graphics card is useless also and maybe they were nice enough to not make it expandable also since that's a favorite tactic in the budget PC world.
In fact, can't you buy used Intel and Amd computers for this cheap that are significantly faster ? Yea I'm pretty sure I see 1+ ghz computers in the paper all the time for 150-250 and you might actually get some quality components out of that, maybe even accelerated graphics. OHHhhh
So, once again I leave you with the question. Why waste your money on a 200 dollar PC ? Who really needs a super cheap Linux system. You're vastly better off buying a used Windows PC and almost certainly getting more PC for your dollar. With dual core out, decent used computers are everywhere perfectly fast enough to run many popular games which the Linux system can only dream of running.
I want Linux to be better, but it's not and I'm practical and rational about it. I've run Ubuntu, Mepis, SUSE, Linux Mint and quite a few others. They are nice, responsive (like any fresh install should be) but they aren't ready for the average user. I have over 10 years working on computers and way more than that just using them. I've worked for many residential and businesses jobs. It would be a mistake to recommend a Linux desktop to them. If you know the people and how they use computers it's obvious Linux will be difficult for them to learn, master or troubleshoot. Even I didn't find it intuitive AT ALL. I had to do web searches to find anything or install anything or more or less DO ANYTHING. How do i chnage this, how do I change that. It's not even remotely as straight forward as XP. I see lots of improvement over when I ran slackware in the 90s but not as much as I hoped for. It's still just X Windows with a bunch of funky programs. They finally got a decent browser and now people think that means Linux is desktop ready. Nope... maybe another 2 years, but without gaming I'd don't see why anyone should waste their money at least not the average user. Power users can do whatever weirdness they want, you can't predict them and they don't represent that big of a demographics. I just don't see why a power user or linux user would want a 200 dollar VIA powered POS.
They should know better than to buy that kind of super low end stuff. That's almost as much as a Wii or Xbox and I think we can all agree the Xbox 360 is way more powerful than this computer plus you can mod it. So, what would you buy your family. Some plain old Linux desktop to surf the net or a Wii or Xbox. I'd go for the fun gaming platform. If I wanted a useless surfing computer (also known as suck computer) I'd get some used POS and poof I have a computer to surf with. Or maybe run terminal server for a thin client surfing solution, but any fool can get and hookup an old PC to surf with for cheaper than this Linux system and they don't have to learn a new OS.
I'm sure Walmart has low quantity of these PC's consider Lindows failure. I bet they had lots of returns on those things. People thought they were 'real' computers... haha. - greevar, on 11/13/2007, -0/+3Have you written a shader API?
- ek3s, on 11/13/2007, -0/+3You don't need to run it on Ultra Kick Ass Graphs mode at all you know. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people who play WoW on ***** computers as there are people playing EQ2 and LotR.
-
Show 51 - 100 of 132 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is