DirextX

Discuss software and how to tweak more performance out of your system.
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nk
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DirextX

Post by nk »

Is it necessary to have latest DirectX installed to get full multimedia performance ? If no, which is the best 'oldie' version?
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punkrawker82
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Post by punkrawker82 »

Each game needs a certain level of DirectX depending on when it was made. QuakeIII/Unreal Tournament need DirectX 7 or higher. While Jedi Knight 2 and Max Payne need DirectX 8/8.1. You can use an older version of DirectX as long as you don't have any games or other applications installed that need a newer version.

So it all depends on what your applications need. Usually they let you know if DirectX needs to be updated.

As far as a good "oldie" version, older versions have bugs in them and generally don't run multimedia as well as the newer versions. They made 9.0b because 9.0a itself had a big glitch in it. So I'd just recommend sticking with the newest DirectX version 9.0b... :D
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ADS Turbo Quad 4 Port USB PCI Card
Linksys NC100 v2 NIC
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nk
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Post by nk »

I experience really lot of problems with Win98SE (with lot of patches) and latest DirectX 9.0b - random hangs of random applications. Now, my system seems pretty stable with the built-in DX 6.1.

I'll need DX 8 in few days, so i hope it will be much more compatible with win98 than DX 9

Which can you recommend - DX 8.0 or 8.1 ? Both will work for me, and as i've seen with DX9, newer is not always the best.
AMD K6-III 400 MHz (66x6)
GigaByte GA-586S2 512K cache
256 MB SDRAM PC100
Riva TNT2 M64 PCI 32 MB
Creative Ensoniq PCI
10 GB Samsung UDMA/33
monaro327
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Post by monaro327 »

i experience no problems with dx9b on my k6 sysstem just make sure you have all the latest drivers is your older one's don't work with it..
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nk
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Post by nk »

monaro327 wrote:i experience no problems with dx9b on my k6 sysstem just make sure you have all the latest drivers is your older one's don't work with it..
I have two systems with totally different hardware, both with DX9.0b and video cards with S3 Trio chips. Both have same problems.

Seems that newer DX doesn't like older S3's (especially older drivers).
AMD K6-III 400 MHz (66x6)
GigaByte GA-586S2 512K cache
256 MB SDRAM PC100
Riva TNT2 M64 PCI 32 MB
Creative Ensoniq PCI
10 GB Samsung UDMA/33
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tazwegion
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Post by tazwegion »

I also had difficulty with the DX 9.x's, so I'd recomend DX 8.1 it supports my Retro flavoured games just nicely :wink:


As for drivers & Win 98SE... 'I'm of the belief' that Microsoft don't offer support for 9x OS versions anymore, though if you look hard enough, generally you can pretty much find any driver on the web ;)
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