DirectX 9 or DirectX 10?

There are many computer gamers who wonder whether they should switch to the newest PC game technology standard from Microsoft. The question is not without merit. As a matter of fact, according to grpahics card manufacturers (starting with AMD-ATI and nVidia) and Microsoft, DirectX 10 brings a lot of major improvements to video quality. But this is not coming alone: It creates the double need of upgrading to Windows Vista (DX10 only works with Vista – even if some hope to make it work with Windows XP) and of purchasing a very recent grpahics card (for example, nVidia 8800 or AMD-ATI HD 2900 XT). If you notice that video games tend to run slightly slower under Windows Vista than on an older OS and that all those purchases will brun a hole in your wallet, it is urgent to ask: Will it change my gaming experience?

Thanks to Voodoo Extreme (what a lovely name for a web site! 🙂 ), it is now possible to compare the images of a real game (Crysis) in both operating modes. And I can tell I’m not convinced at all. DirectX 9 does not look feeble to me. You can judge by yourself, but my opinion is made: DX10 or DX9 look the same, even with a PC game that was optimized to bring the best out of DirectX 10.