So the later DX’s are all gushed about, but is that all just ms propaganda? All the DX comparison videos I’ve seen either look exactly the same or are entirely fake. So is there really a noticeable difference between the DX’s, and are there any surprising and real comparisons out there?
The differences between DX9 and DX10 are pretty much lighting and water, the difference between DX10 and DX11 is tessellation.
(There are other improvements as the levels go up, but that’s the basics.)
there is no difference between d3d9 and 10(for programmers there is a difference) but 11 is very different.
in DX11 you have a new component called DirectCompute, so you can use your GPU as GPGPU and in D3D you have new stuff like Tesselation, this does add details with polygons corresponding to a heightmap directly on the GPU to reduce CPU workload.
The only place you can REALLY tell the difference is in 3DMark tests.
Doesn’t DirectX 11 also have better performance?
yep.
Here is a comparison I have just captured on my PC from the nVidia Islands Demo using DirectX 11’s tessellation feature. On the left is with tessellation enabled, and disabled on the right.
Unlike techniques like normal, bump or parallax mapping (which work to give the appearance of extra geometry) Tessellation actually adds extra geometry on the fly and is shaped procedurally often by deformation maps. I’ve tried various demo’s on my card, including the heaven benchmark (video here) and have to say the difference with a relatively small performance hit is outstanding.
You can also control LOD (level of detail) quite easily as you can add more geometry to meshes that are closer and less geometry to meshes further away.
Unfortunately it won’t significantly impact games until DirectX11 is commonplace, as then it becomes cost effective and practical for developers to use it. Also consider that although the X-box 360 does support a less capable hardware tessellation - I don’t think the PS3 does - and most games are multi platform so it’s impractical to implement features that only a small proportion of your userbase can utilise.
Note: Apologies if I have gotten something wrong here 
DX11 looks very interesting now that I know what it actually does. However I am still suspicious that those comparisons exaggerate the improvement. So does anyone have a ball park guess of when we’ll actually get games with tessellation? Also, in the Heaven video, how do the make the tessellated objects? Do the have to create all the complex geometery, or does each texture have a tessellated geometer to go with it?
Last year.
The latest Stalker game has tesselation.
BC2 uses DX11 but all it does is make shadows look nicer.
Which is worth it at times. Bad shadows can be REALLY fucking distracting at points.
Also, AVP3 has tesselation. But it’s not worth mentioning because the game is shittish (as in not good at all, but not entirely without enjoyment).
Metro 2033 has tesselation if you enable DX11 mode on it. I’m pretty sure it’s used to smooth out character models and makes their equipment look more bulky and realistic.
dx10 improved up on dx9 with a programmable pipeline and removes the fixed pipeline. A new driver format was introduced, claims to increase performance, but the big thing is it forces hardware manufacturers to have EVERY features of Dx10 supported rather than only a few parts like with directx 9. It also removed direct draw ( 2d drawing ) and allows for shader model 4.
Besides tessellation, dx11 allows access to color targets and depth targets ( pixel coverage information ) as input to the pixel shader, allowing you to have deferred shading with MSAA without artifacts. Which is a huge deal. Dx11 is more of a improved tool set from dx10 that was made to make the programmer lives not only easier but open new doors.
I just wish it was as simple as installing a new DX version… Most DX10 cards are now entering the obsolete phase, and as an 8800GT owner that makes me a saaaad panda. 