I am buying a new iMac and the graphics card supports Directx10 and i wanted to check if i could install directx10 on mac os or if i need to use bootcamp and install it on windows vista or xp thanks.
Mac OS X doesn't use or support using DirectX. OS X's graphics are handled in OpenGL. The only way you're going to be able to run DirectX 10 on a Mac is with Windows Vista, which isn't worth the tens of gigabytes of disk space you would have to throw away to install it. Windows XP is your best bet, even though DirectX 10 isn't available for it.
DirectX is a Windows-only API. Macs, Linux and everything else use OpenGL. Don't worry though, because OpenGL 3.0 would already include all the stuff that DirectX10 was supposed to have over DX9.* while still remaining backward compatible, so you can still run an OpenGL 3 game on OpenGL 2.* or earlier hardware (where you can't run a DX10 game on non-DX10 hardware). You could try getting native graphics performance by using Boot Camp and installing Vista, though personally I'd rather suggest using VMWare Fusion or Parallels 3 as these new versions of virtual-machine software now support GPU acceleration (mostly to support Aero in Vista, but it still works with the majority of games). Then you don't even have to dual-boot to still run Windows games on your Mac. ;) :)
Log in to comment