3D Graphic Cards Trend Setters

What a 3D card can do is defined as much by the API (Application Programming Interface). You’ll know this as DirectX (specifically, its Direct3D component). Rival, OpenGL API still exists, but it's rarely used for Windows games.

Rather than a game developer having to understand exactly how each and every different card works and code for it, they can code for a standard set of Direct3D instructions, which DirectX translates into graphics card-speak on their behalf.

Think of it like a coffee machine - rather than the thirsty guy having to work out how to make the internal machinery boil water, grind beans and squirt milk, he just presses a button. The thirsty guy is a game developer who wants to call up a certain graphical effect, and Direct3D is those buttons - except there's loads of them. In this case, Microsoft decides on the buttons. It's no good a GeForce11 having feature X, if Direct3D can't call it up.

So, for as long as DirectX remains the de facto standard for Windows' 3D card API - which is likely to be the case for a long while, as few other firms are in a position to develop and popularize a viable alternative. Microsoft works in tandem with the likes of NVIDIA and ATI to ascertain what they're working on and how to incorporate it into a new version of DirectX, but recently with DirectX 10 it's demonstrated how terrifyingly absolute its chokehold is on 3D gaming.

While certain technical justifications as to why it, and its new shiny-shiny is only possible on Vista have been offered by Microsoft, many people have interpreted it as a strong-arm tactic to make graphics-thirsty gamers buy the troubled operating system.