What is DirectX in the video card

Microsoft DirectX is a set of technologies that are designed to make windows-based computers an ideal platform for running and displaying applications that have rich multimedia elements. DirectX includes security and performance updates, as well as a number of new features that cover all technologies. Applications can access these new features by using the DirectX API.

The utility of DirectX

DirectX strengthens 3d graphics and sound effects and provides designers with a common hardware driver standard that allows game developers to not write different drivers for each brand of hardware, and also reduces the complexity of installing and setting hardware. The advent of DirectX is to provide direct service for many software.

The composition of DirectX

Display part: The display part serves as the key of the graph processing, divides into DirectDraw (DDraw) and Direct3D (D3D), the former is responsible for 2D image acceleration, the latter is mainly responsible for the 3D effect display.

Sound section: The most important API in the sound section is DirectSound, which, in addition to playing sound and processing mixes, also strengthens the 3d sound, and provides recording capabilities to improve the compatibility of the sound card.

Input section: Input part DirectInput can support a lot of game input devices, it can make these devices fully play the best state and full functionality. In addition to the keyboard and mouse can also connect the handle, rocker, simulator and so on.

Network part: The network part DirectPlay mainly is for has the network function game to develop, provides the various connection way, the Tcp/ip,ipx,modem, the serial port and so on, lets the player use each kind of networking way to carry on the battle, moreover also provides the network dialogue function and the secrecy measure.

The history of DirectX

DirectX has developed to date from DirectX 1 to the latest DirectX 11 and has multiple versions (no DirectX 4 exists). Among the major changes are the following:

DirectX 8.0: The first introduction of the "pixel rendering" concept, it is easy to create a real surface dynamic ripple effect.

DirectX 9.0: Increases the processing of floating-point data, which can only be processed for integers, thus increasing the rendering precision so that the final processing color format reaches the movie level.

DirectX 10: Improved API and drive effectiveness, parallel engine support technology, unified rendering architecture.

DirectX 11: The GPU can be allowed to engage in more general-purpose computing, not just 3D operations.