Have a question for you smart people, it may seem obvious but I cannot find any documentation to help my question/research.
If I have an old game on a vista machine (Diablo 2: LOD), and I want to run it in compatibility mode for WinXp, will I loose DirectX 10 functionality (as directx10 does not run on XP) or will the game still be using DirectX10 even in the compatibility mode.
Reason for running in compatibility mode you ask? Well since vista does not use Direct Sound like WinXP did, I lose some of the more advanced sound functions (3D Bias & Environmental sounds for example) but I’m told running in XP compatibility mode (with admin rights) will solve this problem, which is nice easy fix I agree, but I not want to loose DirectX 10 functionality due to compatibility mode for sound improvements.
There is no difference between playing old games on DX9 or DX10, because the game simply doesn’t use the new techniques of DX10…
Especially Diablo 2 which has a quiet old graphic engine won’t look any different…
A game which needs XP-compatability-mode for sure doesn’t profit of DX 10…
My brother also plays Diablo 2 LOD and he runs it in without any additional settings as it won’t change anything i think…
He has no problems playing it in the usual mode…
Im quite aware Diablo 2 has an old graphic engine, however i was not sure if it benifited anyway from DX10 being installed (which you have now answered for me), however im always a sucker for knowing exactly how things work, so my question was more out of curiosity then attempting a benchmark improvment for my game.
I would have thought that an old game wouldn’t use any directX 10 functionality as it didn’t exist when it was designed. There are currently very few games designed to use DX10.
Thank you both for the responses, they were very helpful, in conclusion, run it in compatibility mode is fine as DX10 won’t be used for diablo2 anyway.
Thank you tech, i do my best to find time to read the forums, but to do work and other commitments i find it hard to get time to post (wouldn’t be fair to start to help someone then not be able to log back on for weeks), but still i do read whats going on, and of course still use avast and install it on as many PCs as possible -_-
Also, while making this reply something else popped to mind, does that mean updating drivers (more specifically graphics and audio) is redundent when it comes to older games as they won’t benefit from the new engine features?
I don’t know as the drivers may not just be related to games and if there is a security issue then you should update. The fact the game may not be able to benefit from any new gaming function in the driver is just a fact of life, but the driver should still be able to deliver what the game can use.
Games that are developed with DirectX 10 in mind are also designed for Vista as this is the first platform to support DX10. So setting them to XP compatibility mode is not really required.
As for the older games, they don’t even use DirectX 10 so it doesn’t really matter.
