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I don't really know much about DirectX other than it is responsible of having better graphic options for games, for example, tessellation and Ambient Occlusion in DX11.

But my question is, why some games (most recent games I've played at least), have the option of choosing DX9 (default) or DX 11 (with advanced options, and obviously with compatible video cards), but there is NO option for DX 10?

Is DX10 a version that never got released? was it defective? or what about it? why those games don't show an option to use DX 10 along DX 9 and 11?

Are there ANY games that show those 3 options? or do they just 'jump' from DX 9 directly to 11? why?

thanks

Lee Taylor
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DiegoDD
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2 Answers2

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This is because Windows XP only supports DirectX 9. DirectX10 was added with Vista, but Vista also got a backport of DirectX11 from Win7 (Platform Update), so Vista/Win7/8 can use DirectX 11 and Windows XP DirectX9. And because providing Dx10 rendering path makes no sense when you can use the better DiretX11, most games only offer those 2 modes.

magicandre1981
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Basically DX10 had a bad design, both in its API and how it would work.

I don't have the details, but DX10 was supposed to be a very big upgrade to the graphic toolchain, because DX9 was getting a little old, mainly because of new graphic cards hardware features, and it was not good enough, add to the fact Vista had its share of problems too. Many things might have piled up as new cards and features got released, so they just released DX11.

Graphic API are complex, because for top-notch graphics, you need to have a software which is adequate to the always changing hardware, which is massively parallel and so on. The quality of a game's graphics will depend on the game programmers, the direct X api guys, and also the nvidia engineers.

Just be thankful it works now !

jokoon
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