Age of Conan DX9 vs. DX10 Comparison

IGN’s AoC Vault offers a comparison of Age of Conan running under its DirectX 9 client versus its DirectX 10 client.

Spot The Differences

* DX10 overall brighter and more vibrant.
* Increased texture definition, improved ground, foliage, water, lava, etc.
* Greater level of realism.

Frames Per Second

While most people are not reporting a large, if any, drop in FPS when running DX10, I have experienced rather dramatic drops.

DX9 Average FPS: 52.3
DX10 Average FPS: 20.2

Initial impressions in the official testlive forum include reports of crashing, some visual glitches and flickering, impressive underwater effects, sluggish gameplay not associated with frame rates, no wind in trees (yet), and difficulty detecting volumetric fog.

Like myself, many believe that this initial DX10 update is a wonderful start with a great effort by Funcom. No doubt there will be many testlive patches prior to the actual live launch of DX10. So far it’s looking great, the biggest issues seem to be crashing and frame rates.