Display modes

[alspal]

I'm just wondering if there has been any information regarding the differences between the different 'display modes' (i.e., Direct3D 8/9, DirectX etc.), and if there are any advantages/disadvantages to using any of them?

[Dynasoft]

D3D8 and D3D9 are HWA modes. D3D8 is more limited in the shaders it supports but will run on (much) older machines. D3D9 should support everything, and will run on almost anything. Both will be slow if you use a graphics extension which hasn't been converted to HWA, or if you run on a pc with a really terrible graphics chip but decent cpu (e.g. some older laptops).

"DirectX" "DirectX+VRAM" are the old Direct-X modes (direct draw 7?), and don't support shaders, and I don't think they really offer any advantages.

[Pixelthief]

Graphical extensions that aren't optimized for HWA will still run on your CPU instead of GPU, and thus will run at least as slowly in HWA as non-HWA. If a nonoptimized graphical effect is the limiting factor to your performance, then even if HWA speeds up the rest of your game to be amazingly fast, it will still run no faster overall as it is limited by the slowest element.

As dyna pointed out, the only real reason to use D3D8 instead of D3D9 is to allow compatibility with much older machines, but virtually everything modern will run D3D9, so its not really an issue.

[Shawn]

Graphical extensions that aren't optimized for HWA will still run on your CPU instead of GPU, and thus will run at least as slowly in HWA as non-HWA. If a nonoptimized graphical effect is the limiting factor to your performance, then even if HWA speeds up the rest of your game to be amazingly fast, it will still run no faster overall as it is limited by the slowest element.

As dyna pointed out, the only real reason to use D3D8 instead of D3D9 is to allow compatibility with much older machines, but virtually everything modern will run D3D9, so its not really an issue.

Personally, I wouldn't worry about D3D8. I know not everybody has a modern machine, but I don't see that as a reason to limit yourself. I'd just look ahead to the future.

[MuddyMole]

There is no reason at all to use d3d8.
Even very old graphics cards which only fully support d3d7, are usually still d3d9 "compatible", so you don't have to worry about games not running.

I would recommend you use d3d9, but add an option to replace pixel shader effects for compatibility on older hardware.

[alspal]

If you use Direct3D 9 does that require the user to have DirectX 9(is direct3d and directx the same thing?)?

[Dynasoft]

Direct3d is a part of DirectX.

[alspal]

If you use the "standard" runtime, would it run better than the non-HWA MMF2 standard one? Or are they the same.

[Shawn]

If you use the "standard" runtime, would it run better than the non-HWA MMF2 standard one? Or are they the same.

They are the same

[dsilvers]

D3D9 is the safer bet. You have to figure most people who use computers to play games either have a GeForce 7 series / ATI HD1000 series or higher card, which means DirectX 9 compatibility, and anyone using Windows Vista or 7 is already using Direct X 10/11, so really there's no need to display in DirectX 8. Now if there was DirectX 10 compatibility, that would be different, as there are still plenty of people using Windows XP (myself included, for my desktop at least), and rendering using D3D10 would flat out make XP incompatible. Luckily that isn't an option... yet. Oh but the lighting effects we could achieve if it were.