I was wondering if anyone has any news about the near future of graphics standards?

I was thinking of getting an X1800 (R520) but then I remembered that Direct X 10 is going to be out soon, its also going to be Windows Vista's graphical standard, and will this card support it? Or is is best to wait for the new R580 due out next year sometime?

Any one with any info, ideas or takes on this subject?

Wait, don't wait, always a difficult question. I'm guessing we need to know a bit more about Direct X 10 and what features it demands.

I know for sure it would like Shader Model 4 which isn't due to be on nVidia's or Ati's cards until the summer of 2006 I think.

Microsoft speaks DirectX 10

Games Developers Conference Europe WGF is dead, please welcome DX10


By Fuad Abazovic in Londinium: Friday 02 September 2005, 16:01

MICROSOFT finally saw sense and decided to drop Windows Graphic Foundation (WGF) and replace it with the more easier and logical DirectX 10 name for its nexgen API.
It gave some details to the developers officially about its upcoming API and we know that it plans to release this API together with Longhorn. Or Visa, as we must learn to call it.

The DirectX 10 API will have completely new and faster dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and is supposed to run much faster. The company decided to cut the backward compatibility with DirectX 9, 8, 7 and lower in this API but there will be a way to use games programmed for those APIs. Microsoft will enable support for DX 9 or lower games through a software layer, meaning it might run slower.

The company did this to make the next API faster, it said, and at the same time will take some burden of the CPU runtime. At the same time we learned that DirectX 10 will have support for Shaders beyond Shaders, model 4.0.

It's coming with Longhorn but we learned that Shader Model 4.0 might come even before Vista.