DX Question

[Amats]

I bought an old Dell Optiplex 360 computer with a 2.93 GHz Core 2 Duo cpu and win7pro64 to use until I get my gaming computer built.  It had no graphics card so I am thinking I'll use this one.  EVGA GeForce 210 DirectX 10.1 01G-P3-1313-KR 1GB 64-Bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card  This computer has DX11 but the graphics card uses DX10.1  How do I go about changing over to DX10.1?  Will it replace DX11 if i download it?
Thx

[DaveLembke]

Direct X 10.1 is the maximum supported for this video card according to nVidia. Additionally this video card is weak. It wont hold up well to most modern games and will likely lag unless you reduce the graphics settings. I got one of these cards for free and I wasnt impressed with it at all, the older GeForce 9800GT works so much better than the newer Geforce 210. Additionally even the GT 430 I had was also weaker than the 9800 GT and the GT 430 is a DirectX 11 card. So I stuck it out with the older 9800GT in the one system of mine because the 9800 GT is better than low cost somewhat modern cards.

[DaveLembke]

Just realized looking back that I misread your help request. I thought you wanted DX11 vs DX 10.1

The games themselves if they require an older DX then usually the games will invoke a call for older. For example on my one computer that I play older games on, the games came with DirectX 9 bundled with them and  they are either using the 9 that came with them or the DirectX 10 . I have yet to have any games that dont play with a newer version of DirectX. Although 20 year old games like Diablo and Carmageddon have problems with newer video cards causing a screen with rainbow acid trip colors when played on new systems. http://www.diablofans.com/forums/diablo-iii-misc-forums/diablo-legacy-forums/diablo-i-hellfire/70388-colors-for-diablo-are-messed-up

[Amats]

Thanks for that info Dave, since I have the medium tower optiplex 360 that card should fit ok.  The only hurdle I would have after that would be to find a 450 - 550w psu it requires that will fit my case.  Are there any out there you know of?  Oh, and also this mb only has 2 ram slots and is limited to 4gb of ram, would that change anything?

[DaveLembke]

That Geforce 210 should work fine on a 300 watt power supply or better. System I am on now has only 2 RAM slots and maxes out at 4GB. With the Core 2 Duo CPU the types of games you would be running should fall into the 4GB being plenty of RAM. Multitasking would eat up RAM so just limit what you have running at the same time which woudl also make for games to run better with CPU not having to juggle too much.

[Amats]

So are you saying not to use the 9800GT?

[DaveLembke]

If you have a 9800 GT that would run better than the Geforce 210. Sorry it took a couple days to get back to you. Was going through a deeper search of active threads here and found yours to respond to.

Also to note, performance also depends on what your going to be running for games. Some games will run fine on a Core 2 Duo and a 9800 GT while others may require you to set the graphics settings lower to be able to play games with an acceptable frame rate.

[BC_Programmer]

I want ot know where this "9800GT" comes from...The OP never mentioned it...

[DaveLembke]

« Reply #5 on: February 07, 2017, 10:59:49 PM »

    Quote

So are you saying not to use the 9800GT?

Was thinking same thing when this question was slipped in on Feb 7th, but maybe they have one of these kicking around since it was a fairly common card. The 9800 GT would be better than the 210 if they have one. But it all comes down to what games they are going to be playing. Could be a game they want to play that doesnt work well with either card.