I've been reading reviews about this board, and even gone to saphire's website, but I cant see anywhere if this thing has suport for Directx-9.... :(

OK - its red hot on Directx 10, but as I don't have Vista, and never expect to get Vista, what good is this board to me?

And even if I got Vista, which is improbable, what the hell happens to all my older Diretx 9 games? Do I have to play them in sotware mode?

Please could smebody advise if this card supports Directx 9. I'm asking because gfx boards usually advise that they support BOTH DX9 & DX10, but this one says just DX10.

Many thanks :)

It will play DX 9 very well. 4850 is better for you IMO. Less price this new series empahsizes on 10.1 Dx imo.

 It will run all direct X games man. 

I would ask why so adamant on not getting vista but I am just not in the mood to convince anyone about it tonight. I think I will just allow you to remain in the dark.

 try doing some research, man.

zarker:

 I've been reading reviews about this board, and even gone to saphire's website, but I cant see anywhere if this thing has suport for Directx-9.... :(

OK - its red hot on Directx 10, but as I don't have Vista, and never expect to get Vista, what good is this board to me?

And even if I got Vista, which is improbable, what the hell happens to all my older Diretx 9 games? Do I have to play them in sotware mode?

Please could smebody advise if this card supports Directx 9. I'm asking because gfx boards usually advise that they support BOTH DX9 & DX10, but this one says just DX10.

Many thanks :)

 Hi All

The 4870 will run ALL DirectX games, not just DirectX10 games. In addition I am running Vista Ultimate 64bit & it's been nothing but Bliss.

 DirectX 9 support is built into all current generation cards.  If it's a Radeon 9500 or above, it supports DirectX 9.

As for running your games in Vista, I play a plethora of games, from World of Warcraft to Supreme Commander, Battlefield 1942 to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and have never had to run a single one in compatibility mode.  They all have worked fine.

 Thanks for the response guys :)

Basically I'm nervouse. I've always used Nvidia cards before, but I've lost confidence in them. Anyway, all their new new cards come in 3 flavours, with the budget one being cheap because it has a reduced transistor count. They save transistors by removing some hardware support, like AA and support for previous DX versions. The 8400 for example only supports DX10, which is why its so cheap.

I'd hardly call the 4870 a card with reduced transistors, but it is kind of in the low price btacket, and I've yet to see a review of it that gives its DX9 performance rating (something you generally see for other cards). So I'm holding back for now. I've sent a query email to Saphire asking them, and if I get a response I'll post it here.

Thanks again

zarker:

 Thanks for the response guys :)

Basically I'm nervouse. I've always used Nvidia cards before, but I've lost confidence in them. Anyway, all their new new cards come in 3 flavours, with the budget one being cheap because it has a reduced transistor count. They save transistors by removing some hardware support, like AA and support for previous DX versions. The 8400 for example only supports DX10, which is why its so cheap.

I'd hardly call the 4870 a card with reduced transistors, but it is kind of in the low price btacket, and I've yet to see a review of it that gives its DX9 performance rating (something you generally see for other cards). So I'm holding back for now. I've sent a query email to Saphire asking them, and if I get a response I'll post it here.

Thanks again

I still don't understand where you are coming from... Oh, and please stop emphasizing about transistors. The 4850 and 4870 have the same amount (link) but they have different performance. Best way to compare are benchmarks. But if you want to look at the specs, you should look at stuff like stream processors (don't compare AMD/ATI's to Nvidia's because you really can't), core/shader/memory speed, etc.

I don't know what you mean by DX9 performance ratings. Just look for all the benchmarks out there using DX9 games. HotHardware has a review of the 4850 and 4870. Here is one of the benchmarks featuring Unreal Tournament 3 (a DX9 game). (Link) They have more benchmarks too, featuring DX10 and OpenGL. It is all in their review, just read it.

By the way, the 8400 can play DX9 games too. It is cheap because its performance is very low.

RyuGTX:

By the way, the 8400 can play DX9 games too. It is cheap because its performance is very low.

The DX10 functionality of the 8400 is only really good for Vista's GUI bling and is pretty much useless for DX10 features in games because it's too weak of a card that's not for gaming anyway.

 BTW: I'm sure you knew that Ryu... just droppin some basic info for whoever.

 Thanks for that link Ryu :D - That's exactly what i wanted.

Cool :)

To answer the question of this topic: Yes and no.

It all depends on how much power you need for your games. If, thinking about the future, then it could be a good buy. Too bad it runs hot and that it wants a lot of electricity. Definitely not so cool in that perspective. Some people have recommended to replace the cooler on some of these cards to something better, that would be cool, however.

I don't know if you ever have heard about Driverheaven, but their tests are quite good! Look at this review.

What is comes down to is 1 what resolution do you game at? 2 What aa and af levels do you realisticly expect? Give and idea as to what games you play and we can give you a better estimate as to wether the 4870 would be a waste for you or not.