ATI pushes DirectX 10

ATI is promoting the benefits of the switchover to Microsoft's DirectX 10.

Programming overheads will be drastically reduced in DirectX 10 and this will enable a graphics card - especially when gaming - to spend more time actually working, rather than preparing to work.

DirectX is Microsoft’s graphics application programming interface (API), which developers use to create computer game software. The limitations of version 9, first released in late 2002, are now beginning to be exposed by cutting edge games.

The new specification also provides programmers with more ways to process, access and move data or visual objects that users see on the screen.

However, DirectX 10 will only be available on Windows Vista with no backporting to XP planned, though version 10 will be backwards compatible with version 9.

This will present a challenge to game developers who, given the large Windows XP install base, will have to write games for versions 9 and 10 simultaneously.

Unified shading architecture is another advance that ATI and its competitors will implement at hardware level and DirectX 10 will cater for at software level.

Unified shading involves combining the a graphics card's geometry, pixel and vertex shaders. ATI says this 'universal shader', controlled by a thread arbiter, will be more efficient in rendering scenes.

ATI’s DirectX 10 hardware will see the graphics processing unit (GPU) of a card engage in computation beyond simply scene-rendering.

Contrary to the current trend among CPU manufacturers to produce chips with lower power consumption requirements, graphics manufacturers’ cards are set to draw even more.

Richard Huddy, ATI’s developer relations manager, said: 'DirectX 10 will see the PC become more console-like.'

It will also benefit Microsoft’s Xbox 360 indirectly, because it will be easier to move titles from PC to Xbox and vice-versa.

Huddy said that except for two optional texturing features, both ATI and Nvidia will support all DirectX 10 features, because nothing will be in the standard unless both manufacturers cards can handle it.

'There will be no features in DirectX 10 supported by one graphics card manufacturer and not the other,' he said.