DirectX 8.0 is out

Bard

It's available now... enhance your gaming experience (or whatever...) with DirectX 8.0

Download @: http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0-10045-100-3623687.html

More info @: http://www.microsoft.com/directx/

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Hobbes

I thought the games had to support the new features to enhance it.

You install it and tell us what it's like.

Bard

I'll install it - because it's new technology and is likely to giver better speed, reliability, resolution capabilities, clarity, whatever... but!... to be honest- I wouldn't be the best person to tell you if there's an improvement - or more specifically - WHERE the improvement is, as I'm not a completely avid game freak.

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Greenbean

I installed it on saturday - can't say I notice anything - probably need a very new card to make any use of the new stuff. It also prompted me to install the newest nvidia drivers 50% increase in speed boasted - can't say I'd even notice that

As for being stable; nothing has glitched - halflife, ut, random 3d games, strategy games... all going fine.

My opinion on 3d cards tends to be: don't buy one until you absolutely have to, takes about 2 years from buying your last for this to happen, then buy the dearest one possible. You'll be surprised that for all the bs spewed about fancy new features on cards etc how little they really advance; when I upgraded from a atirage pro to a tnt2ultra I thought games would run 10 times faster etc but its all just hype; I got a x2 performance increase and higher resolutions to play with.

Hobbes

From the reviews I read the speed increase is in new functions which the games have to be programmed for.

Bard

FIFA 2001 requires DirectX 7... putting DX8 on seemed to make it that bit faster and less jerky in higher resolutions though.

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TwoShedsJackson

I never install anything like this until I get a game or demo that requires it - if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Greenbean

Scaredy cat!

Jelvon

directx8 has improved games for me , for instance the demo of venom runs way smoother now , all in all , its just great

Bard

Well Q3A and UTDemo haven't frozen up my PC once since I put DX8 on and they used to with regular abandon and recklessness under DX6 or 7, so I'm happy with it. Apart from that, playing games in higher resolutions (1280*1024) is now perfectly viable and they run nice and smoothly.

FIFA 2001 looks amazing at 1280*1024 on an Apple 19" MultiScan monitor ( a monitor which was made specifically and used a lot previously for video editing ). The level of detail is truly stunning...

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Hobbes

DX8 is excellent! ... at completly ****ing up your system.

Installed it and graphics were screwed when I played Sacrifice (worked already). Installed new 3dfx drivers but the graphics are still screwed so I dropped the resolution and it appears to have fixed it but the graphics aren't as nice as they were before I installed. Thank you MS (*******s).

Is this supposed to make the X-Box look better?

Moriarty

What do u expect if you use a 3dfx card?
Dx8 runs quite nice on my GeForce 2 runs very nicely, thank-you-very-much

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Moriarty
moriarty@gamersfm.com

Stephen

DX8 didn't mess anything up for me (P3-866/256ram/16mb matrox g400) - but didn't seem to make a bit of difference to anything either.

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- Munch