A nice informative write-up about DirectX 10 has been posted over at FiringSquad.com. Follow the link.http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/direct...iew/default.aspOne of the points I found interesting from the Tim Sweeney interview in the article."FiringSquad: A lot has been made about the speed boost DirectX 10 will bring over DX9. In part due to the new driver model and in part due to other efficiencies. In your position you get to work with the latest hardware

Applied to the complexity of FSX that means no more than 15-20% improvement, I reckon. The `CPU cost of rendering` in FSX is not the sole CPU resources being consumed, so even if you freed up all of the CPU capacity you'd only get a small proportion of total consumed resources for re-allocation!Given that you're probably going to need at least $700 in upgrades that doesn't seem like a cost-effective strategy, when average fps is in the low teens or early twenties - that kind of increase will be the order of 3-8fps, not enougch to create anough overheads for complicated addons. All the more reason for ACES to fix FSX under DX9/XP.Allcott

Only a doubling of the frame rate in fsx would really even start to get us where we would like to be. There's no way that dx10 will double the frames so it wont be much of an improvement over what we have now. Factor in the bloat of vista and even with the increased efficiency of dx10, any gains that would be had would be taken back by the bloat of the OS. From 10fps with medium sliders to 12fps. *whoopee*

Yeah, especially when a MS Head Honcho pops by to tell us that Vista/FSX under DX9 will incur a performance penalty. So if you make the comparison with FSX/XP, then a doubling seems to be the only way to ensure sufficient spare capacity for the size and volume of the the addons that will be coming for FSX. If you think about the comparison between Vista/DX9 and Vista/DX10 and FSX, then that needs to be a tripling. Can anyone see DX10 providing that kind of miracle unless the entire engine is written around it and can take advantage of multiple cores? I can't. There isn't the I/O room in current processors as the design ethos has shifted to sharing the load among multiple cores. It's ACES that are out of step, and only a fundamental redesign from the ground up is going to offer that, and the DX10 patch doesn't sound like its going to be anything other than a modification and enhancement of existing code - code which has seemingly reached its limit with DX9. But its all specualtion at this stage - and rhetorical for me anyway as I'm not putting Vista on unless the licensing policy changes dramatically. Allcott

> Applied to the complexity of FSX that means no more than 15-20% improvement, I reckon.True with the figure... MSFS does so much more with the processor than just rendering graphics - but, when you look at it from a "sliders" perspective, it IS essentially the graphics engine that renders the polygons of the ground terrain and objects. Sliding to the left with them improves performance (FPS) significantly. If the terrain engine (polygons) and autogen engine (polygons) can be offloaded in some measure, this could give you "right-skewed-sliders" visuals with "left-skewed-sliders" performance...I think we also have to temper our performance improvements against the simple fact that these DX10 cards will be another generational step forward in sheer GPU power, nevermind DX10. The new graphics cards will likely give a measure of improvement in DX9, with an additional DX10 improvement with the appropriate patching. Colletively, it could amount to a significant and worthwhile boost.Only time will tell!-Greg

No, not FSX! Sorry.http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=79188A couple of videos from Crysis showing genuine DX10-generated gameplay and a flythrough, which has relevance for simmers. Yes, it looks nice, yes the lighting is improved, but does this look like a whole new epoch? At least its not a render, but actual results of the the new API in action.Allcott

Agree 100%. I did some tests to see where the bottle neck(s) is(are). I have a 6800GT and AMD xp 3200+ (not the greatest machine, but still getting at least 15 - 20 fps over New York City zoomed all the way out with the Aerosoft addon in FS9, which by the way, has 3 times more buildings than FSX when you max out the details and water is set to low). At the same time, I am only getting 6-9 fps with FSX, lucky if 11. BTW, reduction of texture size through mods does not make any difference.I reduced the gpu core speed by 1/3, no change in FR. (Tests shader app speed)I reduced memory speed in the graphics card, no change in FR. (Tests texture rasterizing speed)I set AGP from 8X to 4X, no change in FR.I increased system memory latance by a third, no change in FR.I reduced CPU clock speed by 1/3, FR dropped by 1/3.This looks to me FSX is very CPU limited. If I want to get 20 fps over that same area, I might have to get a 6.4GHz cpu. Wish me luck. However, I am OK with 15 fps. So, at the moment, I am building a c2d and will overclocked to 3.5GHz or above which will deliever 5.25GHz of raw P4 speed. As for if those DX10 cards are magic bullets. My answer is no. The reason is when I run FS9 the gpu core temp usually increase by 10 degree C where as with FSX, the gpu core temp only increased by about 3-5 degree C. That at the very least, tells me that FSX is spending its cpu time doing something else, not sending stuff to the graphics cards. Also, we know that of the time used to send stuff the gfx card, 40% of it is used by the protocol (from MS DX10 persentation). The increase in performance with DX10 is only in the protocols department. Everything else, vectices, tectures, etc, will still consume the same amount of bandwidth. Let's say DX10 delievers what it promises (overhead for protocol is reduced to 20% on the cpu side), rending performance on the cpu side will increase by 32%, and that is it. I can get that increase just by overclocking my c2d with better cooling.RegardsWai

Hey. Do you know if the torrent exists on the internet? That side hit the bandwidth limit already, can't view the video.