Vista SP1 - Directx 10 Update Will Hurt Your Wallet

[GhostShip]

Yet another round of mindless updates folks each one likely to cost you more of your hard earned loot   

http://apcmag.com/7790/vista_sp1_needs_new_hardware

Vista Service Pack 1 comes with an important update for gamers - DirectX 10.1. The catch? You need brand new hardware to support it, and NVIDIA enthusiasts are left totally out in the cold.

One of the benefit Windows Vista brought to the gaming table was the next version of DirectX – version 10. With the potential improvements to 3D gaming potentially outweighing the anticipated performance drop in running games on a more resource-hungry operating system, most hardcore gamers waited until ATI and NVIDIA released their DirectX 10-capable GPUs before taking the plunge and upgrading to Vista.

So all this is great news, right? If you lashed out on a DirectX 10 card, then perhaps not. Although DirectX 10.1 is fully backwards-compatible with DirectX 10 features and hardware, the reverse isn’t true. Neither NVIDIA’s GeForce 8 series nor ATI’s Radeon HD 2x series of GPUs support DirectX 10.1. ATI’s new products – the Radeon 3870 and 3850 – do support DirectX 10.1, but NVIDIA apparently has no plans to release a DirectX 10.1-capable GPU.

Nice to know MS still has the forced upgrade policy in place to push those folks with more money than sense onto the treadmill of gloom 

[White Stripes]

i wonder if SP1 can be seperated from DX10.1 .... ive never seen DX 'stuck' to a service pack before... DX updates have always been seperate...

[White Stripes]

...then again ive never seen a browser be stuck to a service pack (SP2)... (i -still- havent got to fully stress test IE7... mainly cos im not shelling out the $$$ for a new version of windows just to run a browser...)


this upgrade treadmill is getting annoying... seems MS is trying to keep up with Apple on that one now...

[Cobra]

Vista? What's that?

When DX10 was coming out, my reply was "So what's the big deal?" and I was harassed by tech geeks explaining all of it's amazing new features that makes it more than worth buying right away.

Now they are being screwed and I'm still happy with XP and DX9.