DirectX 9 vs 9a vs 8a

[nephalim]

Is there any downside to DirectX 9? Any real plus side (for anything not written for it specifically)?
What's fixed in 9a? Any up/downsides to using it as well? Is an update a good idea?

I have a crappy Ati Rage 128 and as far as N64 emulation is concerned my primary concern is getting things to work properly (which they almost never do.) I'm also nearly certain that the card "lies" to DirectX about it's capabilities, but i'm not 100% sure, as i'm not sure that it's possible

 

[Zuzma]

Shame on your video card for lieing to directx! But really if your card doesn't suppot a certain feature it wont work in the game your trying to play. My friend could play gta3 on his Diamond Viper II but certain effects in the game didn't work and it looked kind of weird. You don't need to upgrade your directx if you don't want to or if your worried that it will mess up your card. As far as directx messing stuff up I didn't have any problems upgrading to directx 9 but I've seen people have problems with it. I mean there's always a chance that something could get messed up when you upgrade your drivers.

 

[nephalim]

I already updated to 9, with no visible difference.
Should I upgrade to 9a?

What is the upside to upgrading?

 

[Zuzma]

I already updated to 9, with no visible difference.
Should I upgrade to 9a?

What is the upside to upgrading?

Well i'm glad you upgraded fine. As for the upside.. It's got bug fixes and that's about the only benefit I can think of. It would only really benefit you if you had a directx 9 compatable video card.

 

[mightyrocket]

1) To let the graphics *possible* look less messy, you can try updating your video-card drivers. You can always go back, so why not. After I updated the drivers of my ati rage pro it destroyed lots of good things which even couldn't be fixed with the other blending-mode (no text-dialogs in perfect dark and other problems).
2) Using glide64 + evoodoo makes your graphics lots better in many games.
3) I remember my Ati rage pro, and perfect dark was playable. Small problems and good speed, but when I used the other blending mode the menus were visible, and in-game I changed it to the original settings, and the game was playable excellent with minor problems (some textures were unfiltered and no radar).

 

[nephalim]

1) I am using Glide64/eVoodoo (unfortunately the 4.x versions are too buggy with eVoodoo)

2) I am using the newest video drivers (also unfortunately, it's a laptop card, so in addition to the problem of not being able to upgrade the card, ATI doesn't make video card drivers for it, and i'm stuck with whatever dell spits out once ever blue moon.)

3) Blending mode?

 

[EddyB43]

Using DirectX8.1 vs 9a for N64 emulation is irrelevant - Jabo's D3D uses 6 for example. He rewrote it for DX7 for v1.4 of the plugin, but the effort and speed weren't worthwhile so the v1.5 plugin is just DX6 again.

9a is a small patch over 9, but if you use DirectInput controlled controllers you will need it - there are some required DInput fixes in it.

Since you've already taken the plunge to DX9 you should upgrade to DX9a. Just go through the download at Microsoft.com
and away you go. It will say DirectX 9 while downloading - that's a lie, Microsoft no longer supplies the original DX9, only 9.0a.

 

[flow``]

personally i'd just recommend you update to DX9a and your video card drivers afterwards. downsides? none probably. the only thing i could think of is an increase in performance supposing you havent updated your video card drivers in a while.

ps suppose you have an ATI radeon mobility, you can modify the .INF file to support your mobility cards. look for more info about this at the rage3d.com forums