14 DAY TRIAL // The first three DirectX10 demos are out. It's as simple as that and there's no point to present this idea in a more complicated phrasing. However, I have to say a few things regarding Nvidia's latest 3D behavior.
First, let me remind you that these are indeed the first DirectX10 demos. And that translates into a whole new world of effects that are designed to please the eye. Of course, if you plan to see the demos rendered in DirectX10 mode you will have to buy a G80 series card since 8800GTX/GTS are the only models that have DirectX10 capabilities.
That being said, it is also a known fact that Nvidia still lacks a proper DirectX10 driver. The postponing of the driver didn't earn them any new fans and probably still pisses off a lot of people but it seems there are several problems with the implementation of the new DirectX capabilities into the driver. Motive for which if you plan to run the demos, you will only be able to run them under DirectX9 environment.
The Nzone gaming site has posted three demos which are now available for download. But as I've said, you will only be rendering them in 9.0c mode since the DirectX10 driver is not likely to be available before February or maybe March. Still, I have to say that the demos look pretty impressive even with PS 3.0 based rendering.
In case you want to run them, you will need a GeForce 8-Series VGA card, Windows XP, ForceWare Drivers 97.44 or higher, 512MB system memory and at least 256MB of video memory. I don't know if any of them work with older G7x GPUs but it's worth a try.