I never dreamed that reading through my copy of MaximumPC Saturday would ruin my weekend but it did.
The specific source of my unhappiness was an article on real life video tests using top of the line video cards and DX10 applications.
Keep in mind that when I say “top of the line” I am talking about video cards in the $500-$600 dollar range. Well above the price point of the DX10 video card I bought earlier this year.
After reading the article it looks like this round of new technology is going to be no different than in the past. Meaning that many of us who have DX9 cards still run our applications in DX7 for performance and once we upgrade to a DX10 card we will most likely prefer to run them with DX9 settings.
The reason behind this is that DX9 will be the most efficient use of the new video cards. Of course technically a nice new DX10 video card and a DX10 application will look better than it would under DX9 but who wants to take on average a 30% performance hit on frame rates that are pretty low to begin with?
From memory most of the new DX10 application when run at 1920×1200 (the new 24” widescreen resolution) were getting around 25 Frames Per Second when using the DX10 driver.
I could be wrong but I don’t see a big market for $600 video cards to get 25 Frames Per Second.
So thanks MaximumPC for the wake up call. That dream of DX10 was nice but it’s much better to live in the real world. Because it’s the real world that takes my real money and my real happiness is most often found when properly matched with real expectations.
