> And lo on Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:13:11 -0000, Nicolas Alvarez 
> <nic### [at] gmailisthebestcom> did spake, saying:
> 
>>>    It seems that this is a hoax. Just a marketing campaign. Yes, the
>>> "very high" quality setting does indeed turn on several additional
>>> rendering features, but the hoax is that these rendering features *do*
>>> work in XP with a DX9 graphics card, and they do so at perfectly 
>>> acceptable
>>> speeds. Not allowing to choose this highest quality option unless you 
>>> are
>>> running Vista and a DX10 graphics card has nothing to do with lacking
>>> hardware/OS support, but it's just an artificial limitation.
> 
>> Some people on that forum were saying that if you don't have DX10, 
>> those features would run on the CPU instead of the GPU. Sounds like BS 
>> as well: If it was done by the CPU, the framerates would be a lot 
>> lower. People who edited the config were getting framerates *even 
>> better than on Vista*.
>>
>> Also, it would use the CPU if your GPU doesn't support the features 
>> and you force them enabled anyway; but if you don't have the interface 
>> to do such effects (DX10), there would be no way for the game to get 
>> those effects.
>>
>> So it's definitely as you say and as most people said on the forum: 
>> DX9 can do all those effects.
> 
> Wasn't this one of the original points of DX? 'The program says do this 
> DX action. The card drivers says it can handle it - give it to the card; 
> The card drivers says it can't handle it - can I emulate it?
> 
> Sometimes it was yes, sometimes no; depended on what was being asked for.
> 
Exactly. The program can't say "do this DX action" if that action is 
defined in DX10 and the computer has DX9, so it wouldn't run neither 
emulated nor native on card.

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