What is Direct X 10?

Simply put, DirectX is a Windows technology that enables higher performance in graphics and sound when you're playing games or watching video on your PC.

At the core of DirectX are its application programming interfaces, or APIs. The APIs act as a kind of bridge for the hardware and the software to "talk" to each other. The DirectX APIs gives multimedia applications access to the advanced features of high-performance hardware such as three-dimensional (3-D) graphics acceleration chips and sound cards. They control low- level functions, including two- dimensional (2-D) graphics acceleration; support for input devices such as joysticks, keyboards, and mice; and control of sound mixing and sound output.

Because of DirectX, what you experience with your computer is better 3-D graphics and immersive music and audio effects.

DirectX 10 Benefits

DirectX 10 offers a wide variety of benefits to gamers. More Life-like materials and characters.

You can see the difference for yourself when we compare screenshots taken from 'Halo: Combat evolved', a PC game which was among the best of its class at release and uses DirectX 9.0 and screenshot from 'Crysis', first DirectX 10 supporting game.

DX10 adds a new level of realism to games by making characters more life-like. You can see the incredible detail in the screenshot above. The facial expressions, details of the face, the handle-bar moustache and the glazed looking eyes all add to the realism.

DirectX 10 in Vista 

One of the most exciting developments in Windows Vista is the groundbreaking graphics technology. Many of the newest Windows games take full advantage of the next-generation graphics technology in Windows Vista called DirectX 10. DirectX 10 provides an incredibly detailed experience for gamers of every type, and enables game creators to increase a game's level of realism, enhancing details and complexity in gaming worlds, apply effects like dynamic lighting and weather, and much more.

While Windows Vista is fully compatible with games and hardware that use older versions of DirectX, the new DirectX 10 features are available with a DirectX 10 compatible graphics card and games designed to take advantage of this new technology. Adding a DirectX  10 card to a PC running Windows Vista is like turbocharging your gaming experience. Existing games (most of which were written using DirectX  9) get world class performance, while unlocking the new generation of gaming graphics with DirectX 10 optimized games.

DirectX 10 Supporting Hardware
The first video cards with DirectX  10 support are available today with ATI Radeon & NVIDIA GeForce cards.

For technical details, please visit: http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/