Universe’s Tech Blog

It seems more than a coincidence that NVIDIA announced the release of the first DX 10 GPU within hours of Microsoft’s Windows Vista RTM announcement. Vista marks a significant moment in the history of desktop graphics - it’s the first time most users have had a reason to buy 3D graphics cards for reasons other than gaming.

That said, the 128 parallel scalar processors in NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800 GTX (and the associated $1000 price tag) are overkill if you just want to use Aero Glass. Even if you hit the Flip 3D shortcut really, really quickly.

Such high-end 3D hardware is still all about the games, and DX 10 is the means to a new level of graphical awesomeness. To drive this home Microsoft announced a pile of titles during E3 2006 that would form the Windows Vista game lineup. These titles promised new levels of ‘graphical fidelity’ thanks to the extensive employment of DX 10 (to translate into non-marketing speak - if you don’t buy the new operating system you don’t get your shaderporn).

It’s becoming more and more obvious Vista’s consumer launch date of January 30 will arrive with very little in the way of DX 10 gaming. In fact, I’d go so far as to speculate that the only DX 10 exclusive title on shelves will be a port of Halo 2, and that’s hardly a title on any PC gamer’s wishlist. Considering that the Xbox version of Halo 2 used DX8 era graphics I don’t hold much hope for Halo 2 being jaw-droppingly good looking.

It’s funny how Microsoft’s own demonstration videos seem to shirk titles like Halo 2. The most recent implementation of the saccharine ‘Windows Vista will make your life better in every way’ demo video that we have seen shows people playing World of Warcraft rather than one of Microsoft’s flagship DX 10 titles.

When it comes to demonstrating what actual DX 10 titles will look like Microsoft tends to drag out EA’s DX 10 exclusive First Person Shooter, Crysis. Crysis looks absolutely amazing, and is an amazing poster child for gaming on Vista. The only problem is that it has now been delayed to EA’s fiscal 2007 year, which means that it won’t be out until April at the earliest. The other hot looking DX 10 title, Flagship Studio’s Hellgate: London has not even left alpha, and isn’t even on the release horizon yet.

So what can owners of DX 10 hardware realistically expect when they empty their wallets and fill their hard drives with Vista? The answer is maybe some patches that add new lighting to existing DirectX 9 titles like Relic Entertainment’s Company of Heroes and Microsoft’s own Flight Simulator X.

It’s important to realise this when making a choice of graphics card right now. Native DX 10 hardware is trickling into the market, and Vista isn’t very far off. But for the foreseeable future you will be running DX 9 games. Even when the first handful of DX 10 native games arrive during next year, they will by necessity need to support the vastly superior install base of DX 9 hardware - no one is going to commit sales suicide by developing there game for a technology that is currently only supported on the bleeding edge of PC hardware.

Even if there are top-to-bottom lineups of DX 10 -based graphics cards released before Vista hits, the market is an unknown quantity for games that have been in development for many years already. People will undoubtedly be slow on the DX 10 uptake, which means that DX 10 support in games will be slow to appear.

So don’t base your hardware purchases on the perceived superiority of DX 10. Base them on how the hardware performs in today’s games - a good DX 10 card will still deliver good DX9 performance, but most people will prefer to get decent performance at a prices tag less than $1,000 - and that currently means DX9 hardware.

New console launches are a big deal for the gamers of the world. Sitting outside in the cold waiting in line to buy one, arguing till red-faced about the relative superiority of unreleased products, sighing a little at the lack of kick-arse games in a bundle deal. It’s been this way for a long time now, but the combination of the internet and the PC-like nature of Microsoft’s original Xbox have spawned a new phenomena - the race to be the first to get a new console and pull it to tiny pieces.

In the wake of the PS3 launch in Japan over the weekend, the hardware obsessives at PCWatch in Japan (imagery after the link) have done just that. Taken the hottest piece of electronics on the market today, opened it, tossed the cabling aside and grabbed the screwdriver. While the words on the page are beyond me, the pictures tell an interesting story about what’s under the PS3’s shell.

Firstly there is confirmation of the apparent ease with which the hard drive can be accessed. Much like the not too common PlayStation 2 hard drive, it is externally accessible and appears to be a standard OEM Seagate 5,400rpm SATA drive. I’m betting it won’t take long for people to start tinkering around with upgrading the drive, and from what Sony has said about this being a computer not a games console, odds are upgrading shouldn’t be too complex.

The shots also highlight the extensive use of heat pipes to cool the system, something Sony first employed in the PlayStation 2. The heat pipes are used to spread heat away from the processors and are combined with extensive rear venting to allow the heat to escape. This system helps the console achieve the quiet operation that has been noted so far by users.

Just like Sony used a PSX on a chip to provide backwards compatibility on the PlayStation 2, the PS3 has an ‘Emotion Engine + Graphics Synthesiser’ chip. These are the main two components of the PS2, and are obviously there for backwards compatibility. One might think this is overkill, but Sony has a habit of making radical architectural changes between generations that mean emulation is incredibly difficult.

The two chips in the centre of the motherboard are the Cell CPU and Nvidia RSX graphics chip. PC Watch has removed the heatsink on the RSX to reveal a package that pairs the GPU with GDDR3 chips in a design similar to that used in notebook PCs.

There is something just plain beautiful about how the internals fit together. Say what you will about the gaming side of the equation, from a hardware fetish standpoint this is one gorgeous piece of kit. It’s just a pity us Aussies have to keep the screwdrivers in the drawer until the PS3 finally launches here in March next year.