Hey guys, I got a new PC for Christmas and  I'm not too good with them, so I'm just curious about something. I've heard DX11 will run on DX10 cards, so will it properly on my rig? (Radeon HD 4870 series, Athlon II triple core proccessor, 4 gigs of RAM) My OS is also Windows 7 Ultra. And if it will run, would it be at least decent? Thanks.

A DX11 game will run on a DX10 GPU, unlike a dx10 game on a dx9 card which wouldn't. This is because dx11 is a superset of dx10. However, some of the new features of DX11 are exclusive to the new dx11 GPUs and so you would need one of those to support them.

^ What he said. Basically, you won't be able to use hardware tessellation without a  dx11 card.

" ^ What he said. Basically, you won't be able to use hardware tessellation without a  dx11 card. "

" @torus said:

" ^ What he said. Basically, you won't be able to use hardware tessellation without a  dx11 card. "

I beg to differ.  Tessellation is a supported technology in DX10.1 "  

What is hardware tessellation?

" What is hardware tessellation? "

@jams
Hardware Tessellation adds more complexity to meshes that exist UNDER the textures, It basically raises the triangle count of objects in relation to the texture bump maps.  This make everything look rounder and more organic.  
 
Triangles are the most basic objects that 3D cards can display in 3D space, because they have three points and so can be represented in X Y and Z dimensions via their coordinates.  Take a square piece of paper and fold it across the middle diagonally, see it's made of two joined triangles either side of that diagonal fold?  Well that's how a 3D card draws a square, or any object, out of triangles.  
 
Tessellation means that if a given object, say a sphere, is made of 36 triangles all joined together, then with tessellation, the number of those triangles is multiplied so that the they are smaller and so the surface of the sphere becomes smoother.  
 
Tessellation means going from this...

 
  A Sphere made of a small number of triangles 

....to this!

A sphere made from a larger number of triangles

@jams
Hardware Tessellation adds more complexity to meshes that exist UNDER the textures, It basically raises the triangle count of objects in relation to the texture bump maps.  This make everything look rounder and more organic.  
 
Triangles are the most basic objects that 3D cards can display in 3D space, because they have three points and so can be represented in X Y and Z dimensions via their coordinates.  Take a square piece of paper and fold it across the middle diagonally, see it's made of two joined triangles either side of that diagonal fold?  Well that's how a 3D card draws a square, or any object, out of triangles.  
 
Tessellation means that if a given object, say a sphere, is made of 36 triangles all joined together, then with tessellation, the number of those triangles is multiplied so that the they are smaller and so the surface of the sphere becomes smoother.  
 
Tessellation means going from this...

 
  A Sphere made of a small number of triangles 

....to this!

A sphere made from a larger number of triangles

That is an amazing advancement! Damn too bad I already have a Geforce 285. (sadface)

That is an amazing advancement! Damn too bad I already have a Geforce 285. (sadface)

"That is an amazing advancement! Damn too bad I already have a Geforce 285. (sadface) "

STALKER: Call of Pripyat looks like it uses it, but not to a great extent and only to improve performance.

The good thing is at least DX11 games will work with DX10 cards but almost none of the features in DX11 will be noticeable in DX10 but honestly it will take at least a year or more for any of us to see a noticeable difference in the games we play.  Thats why I'm not rushing out and buying a DX11 card yet even when Nvidia releases their cards.  Plus I just put together my gaming pc with a GTX 260 LOL  and at this point the price you will be paying for a DX11 card is not even worth it, I would wait about 8 months till the price comes down on them and the features are more prominent in the games we play.