Tech Mania

Why you should use DirectX 11 and its Features

Posted: 23 Dec 2009 06:08 AM PST

DirectX 11 is creating a lot of buzz these days, with ATI leading the way over Nvidia by the first one’s to release DirectX 11 graphic cards( 5850 and 5870 to name a few) including the fastest 5970.So why go for directX 11 cards ? How can be made use of ? Coz the future is DirectX 11 for gaming and crystal clear HD picture quality.DirectX 11 can be made use of in Windows 7 as it comes with it while Vista comes with DirectX 10.1.To gloss over the advancements in DirectX 11, Microsoft has released the following features explanations:

Tessellation – Tessellation is implemented on the GPU to calculate a smoother curved surface resulting in more graphically detailed images, including more lifelike characters in the gaming worlds that you explore.
Multi-Threading – The ability to scale across multi-core CPUs will enable developers to take greater advantage of the power within multi-core CPUs. This results in faster framerates for games, while still supporting the increased visual detailing.
DirectCompute – Developers can utilize the power of discrete graphics cards to accelerate both gaming and non-gaming applications. This improves graphics, while also enabling players to accelerate everyday tasks, like video editing, on their Windows 7 PC.

Tessellation

What does Tessellation mean actually ? Tessellation is probably the most significant change in the new DirectX. For those who like realistic looking characters and terrain, tessellation will be king. Basically, it will allow programmers to use more detail in developing game characters and environments. It’s like a transition from normal definition to high definition.

Multi-threading

As this was doing good for programs in Windows 7 this will do good for games too.With the invent of multi core processors and core i7 these can make use of multi threading and multiprocessing capabality. Multi-threading will allow us to take full-advantage of the power within each core, thereby allowing programmers to create more-detailed environments without sacrificing FPS.

DirectCompute

Direct compute will allow programmers to take advantage of the processing power of the graphics GPU. The best way to put this as explained from David Patterson's presentation where he explained, "You have a book and a software program designed to count the number of times a certain word is used in that book. Run that program on a CPU (a serial/sequential processor) and it would start on page 1, read the entire book word-by-word, page-by-page until it finished and eventually give you an answer. Give that same problem to a GPU (a parallel processor) that supports DirectCompute and it would tear that book into thousands of pieces, and read through all of them simultaneously."

Until then check out the difference between DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 in ATi’s 5870

Click here to view the embedded video.

Do check out some related read on DirectX 11

ATI Mobile HD 5650 DirectX 11 tested

DirectX 11 transition to be the fastest

Acer going DirectX 11 way with Acer aspire 8952

DirectX 10.1 Vs Direct 11 – Call of pripyat

Why you should use DirectX 11 and its Features

Visual Studio 2010 RTM delayed

Posted: 22 Dec 2009 12:08 PM PST

vs2010 logo Visual Studio 2010 RTM delayed

Previously Microsoft had released the Beta 1 and 2 versions of Visual Studio 2010 and .Net framework 4, news is that RTM version would be released by March 22nd 2010.This has been delayed coz of some performance and some virtual memory issues.Beta 2 was focused on performance and stability, including integrated tool for SharePoint, including project templates and debugging support, and support for developing Windows 7 applications.

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta period has been extended and another release (RC) will take place between the Beta 2 and RTM in February 2010.

ScottGu quotes

We've also received feedback that the performance and virtual memory usage of VS 2010 Beta 2 is not where people need it to be before we ship.

We've been doing an intensive performance optimization push the last two months that is delivering significant performance and virtual memory usage improvements across the product. The early feedback from a small set of customers testing interim builds since Beta2 has been positive about these improvements. We still have several big performance fixes in the process of being checked in that will improve things even further.

In order to ensure that we are able to receive and react to this feedback, we will also be moving the launch of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 back a few weeks.

Until then download the Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2010 for different versions

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

Visual Studio 2010 Premium

Visual Studio 2010 Professional

Visual Studio 2010 Express