Direct3D 10 has five key changes:
Improved programmer expressiveness (Shader Model 4.0 and Geometry Shaders)
Tight hardware specifications
Improved performance (lower command cycle counts per frame)
Unified instruction sets (HLSL 10)
Stream I/O (Geometry Shader can write to memory)
The concept of a traditional pipeline was demolished with the advent of ATI’s Radeon X1000 series cards and threaded processing. Therefore, saying a card has “N” pixel pipelines is a void concept; it is no longer relevant. Simply scrub it from your mind unless you are talking about older hardware.
There is a lot of information to disseminate when looking at Direct3D 10 and the impact it will have on the future of 3D graphics. I have seen Crysis running on DirectX10 hardware, and all I can say is: “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto.” The future of computer games screams “DirectX 10”, and if you do not have a DX10 card in your system going forward, you will be missing out.
The migration from DirectX 9 to DX10 for programmers will be relatively easy, as the HLSL (High Level Shader Language) is widely accepted, and porting DX9 over to DX10 enabled content will be fairly easy. Programs and tools already exist, which will help developers move their content over.
This is one reason why we have not seen major titles hitting the market over the past few months: everyone is waiting for DirectX 10. But you should not wait when the hardware is available. As you can tell from what you have read in this article, and what you have previously heard about DX10, it will represent a massive increase to performance in existing games. It will make you ready for the future… at least until Direct X11 is hatched…