Vista is now said to be coming in January to the consumer space. Since DX10 is tied to Vista, this puts ATI and NV in an interesting bind.

G80 from NV was right around the corner, with R600 from ATI slated for Fall. Since DX10 is tied to Vista, there is really no point having these GPUs released this year. This means the 7900GTX and X1900XTX will probably remain the high-end single GPU solutions for the next 10 months.

The negative impact I guess is that it means we are stuck with DX9 even longer I guess the good news is that drivers and the GPU roadmap should be fleshed out well. Who this may hurt most is NV. If they were aiming for a Summer G80 launch, by January 2006 they are looking at having to decide between (A) pushing the refresh through or (B) pushing out the G80 series and either pushing back the refresh or cutting G80 short. A 3 months delay for ATI may mean they get their chips out on time

This also has some interesting side effects on processing node. There were rumblings about the half node 80nm process being slow to get underway at TSMC, so the extra time may help both -- which may help consumers. The extra manufacturing time might mean more GDDR3/GDDR4 and better pricing. ANYTHING that means faster GPUs on day 1 of Vista is good--we want the "low end" to be as good as possible.

The Vista delay does cause a bit of problems... I am sure OEMs are ticked, as well are some of the developers pushing out DX10 games. Who knows, I would guess the consumer edition may get pushed back even further, maybe into late Spring. Gonna suck waiting for DX10! Oh well, I was gonna wait for the refresh parts anyhow.

I haven't heard anything about a Vista delay.

I haven't heard anything about a Vista delay.

Here is is: Vista Delayed

Here is the offical link from microsoft.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass [...] eryPR.mspx

Why?

With the possible exception of Halo 2, it's not as though any DX10 _games_ would have been released this year, and it will be years before any games actually require true DX10 chips.

I'm sure both will run DX9 games faster than current chips, so what's the problem?

Actually, Microsoft is smart this time. They're planning to simultaneously launch a few games with Vista. Using DX10 of course. One such game would be Crysis. And aren't nVidia and ATI going to release their DX10 cards this year? Lots of speculation on when, but I'm pretty sure they'll be out this year.

Too bad that's probably also going to be delayed now that Vista's doing it again.

If you read the TG Daily article you will find that it is the the OEM's who are asking for the delay to janurary instead of just apush back to Novemeber. So yes they will be hurt slightly, but I would surmise that most people who buy PC's from OEM's during the holiday's don't buy it for the OS. Thats not to say someone won't be dissappointed, but the vast majority probably don't care at all.

Does anyone have a link to info about Halo 2 coming to the PC, I've been waiting for that. BF2 is getting a bit nuts with all the rambo wanna be's. Grr.

As for directx 10, I don't think it will hurt NV and ATi as much as some people think. I would like to see the cards come out before the games do rather than visa versa. I like the idea of being ready with dx10 hardware before a game hits the shelf so that once the game does come out all I have to do is pop in the CD and let the effects amaze me. Conversely, if I have to wait for dx10 cards and I have the dx10 game, I feel its a waste because I'm not getting the maximum eye candy, but thats just my 2 cents.

i'd like to see dx10 cards in Oct/Nov timeframe (not really sure why but 3 months prior to vista sounds good )

What functionalities will DX10 add over dx9.0c + HDR + ... ? To what OpenGL capabilities would those relate?

While I could see the advantage in programmable pixel shaders in dx9 compared to dx8 fixed PS, I fail to understand how DX10 would be so much better than dx9.

I've read a little bit about, but I am not even going to try and explain it because I don't understand it well enough myself to even start. I still have much reading to do. Best bet is to try and research it yourself, unless there is some Guru that understands it and wanders into this thread.

You might find this article pretty informing:
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6143883/p-4.html

Thanks, that pretty well sums it up

What I mainly saw referenced as having a big inpact on hardware is memory management - which rules out having an AGP card being DX10 compliant. The best we can hope for now is that current video cards will get increased performance from the more efficient model.

By no means am I a guru on any topic, but due to my position I have had the liberty of seeing most of the tech releases, demo kits, and press releases for DX10...

2 things that seemed to be the common thread...

1) There was a large focus on physics, and how to delegate it... (Probably from input from the GPU companies as there are some basic structures to make programming for SLI-Physics(nVidia), Dynamic Load Balancing(ATI), Stand-alone Physics FPU's much easier (Ageia and the ilk)

2) Efficiency, many of the DX9 algorithims have been revamped and take less resources/time to execute which means faster performace with the same hardware.

As I said I'm no guru but from what I have seen physics is the big flogging stick this time around. And plain our better code was the second.

Didn't Microsoft say that DX10 won't be released on XP? If so, do you really think that any sane games company is going to release a game which won't run on 90% of PCs?

It's not as though many people are going to rush out and upgrade XP to Vista: XP already does everything that most people want from their PC. It will probably be two or three years before the majority of gaming PCs are running Vista rather than XP.

Quite true. Most people won't buy Vista the day it comes out. But Crysis for example will also be playable with a DX9 card in XP. It's just that you'll get a lot more eye candy with it running under Vista with a decent GPU. Decent meaning a DX10 card in this case.

I'm not sure, but since DX10 and DX9 are quite different from what I've read, there might be two versions of the game as well. Or perhaps I'm wrong and the difference isn't that big and you can have the game (both versions) on one DVD.

Don't you think that Crysis and other games might be a good selling point for many people? New windows? You said yourself that XP can do most stuff, so why would you buy Vista? Enthusiast gamers will buy a new rig and Vista to play some of the quality games with highest detail & eye candy. And believe me, good DX10 games are better (graphics and physics wise) than 'old' DX9 games.

I'll buy it when I build a new PC in a couple of years, because I won't be able to buy XP at that time even if I want to. I can't help but feel that few companies will want to release both DX9 and DX10 versions of their games when DX9 will do for everyone: unless Microsoft have made the interfaces so similar that it's trivial to do.

This whole DX10 thing stinks... I mean, how attractive can an OS be? The purpose of an OS is to link hardware level with user level in the most lamen of terms.

So I still say that MS has no concrete selling point. An OS with 3d features?? I don't see it enhancing my gaming experience... So let's throw SM4.0 into the pudding, and maybe we can actually sell a resource hog OS.

Sigh, have you even used vista or know anything about it?