is there a difference between DX8 and DX9 framework?

[DOOM III]

futuremark exculpates the critique of building a benchmark more like DX8 by claiming that they built the entire software upon DX 9 framework. my question is that is there a difference if they build 3dmark03 on DX 8 framework rather than DX 9 ? let's forget GAME 4 here which needs DX 9 to run.

 

[Hyp-X]

D3D9 has two-sided stencil support that can be a great benefit to GAME 2 & 3 given the design choices they (FM) taken.

You probably noticed that while they defended themself by pointing to scalability with resolutions, the framerate doesn't change as much as the number of pixels would imply.

That shows that while the lighting passes are shader limited, the shadow-volume passes are vertex-limited. That's one of the reasons why DX8 hardware takes such a large performance hit in these tests as they have to transform the vertices of the shadow-volume twice.

 

[SpellSinger]

Who really cares? FM developed a DX9 benchmark for DX9 hardware. DX8 benchmarks have been done already and it is time to move on. By Xmas this year there should be lots of DX9 hardware out there.

 

[tb]

futuremark exculpates the critique of building a benchmark more like DX8 by claiming that they built the entire software upon DX 9 framework. my question is that is there a difference if they build 3dmark03 on DX 8 framework rather than DX 9 ? let's forget GAME 4 here which needs DX 9 to run.

The framework(known as the parts which can be found under the "common" directory in the sdk) hasn't changed much. The framework itself has nothing to do with supported features or pixel / vertex shaders. The framework of dx8 / dx9 isn't used in 3dmark03. They mad their own small framework around the dx9 core objects. But even the core stuff hasn't changed much between dx8 and dx9. Details have changed like the shader declarations etc...

Thomas