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I've seen a lot of Microsoft's DirectX releases through these years. Actually I'm working with version 9 right now and I read in a book that the October 2006 is one of the best version 9's releases. Though, there are newer and updated version 9's SDK and I don't know which of them is really the most clean and bug-free.

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Which is best is off topic for this site. It's impossible for us to say which will work better for you. Each version has its own bugs, and you have your own requirements. Perhaps one version has the fewest bugs in the features you require, but there's no way to really know that. Since we don't know all the features you want, and we don't know where all the bugs are. – Byte56 Jun 15 '12 at 18:17
I mean, there is no one who have worked with DirectX and knows the least issues with, for example version 9? It isn't a off topic because I didn't say I want to learn DX and come on which one should I choose like other nonsense questions here around the DX topic. Thank You. – MahanGM Jun 15 '12 at 18:33
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I think it's off topic, see the FAQ on "which technology is better". See my previous comment. The one that is "most clean and bug free" depends entirely on what portions of the code you're exercising. Generally speaking the latest version is the least buggy. So overall, you should use the latest. – Byte56 Jun 15 '12 at 18:42
Sorry for arguing but my question is about which version of this technology in a variety of different releases is the best to work with. I'm sorry if it's bothering 'SO' anyway. – MahanGM Jun 15 '12 at 19:01
It's good to defend your questions, don't apologize for that. However, "which technology is better" still applies. You could ask if openGL is better than DirectX, claiming that you're asking about differences within "graphics technology". You're clearly still talking about different technologies, they both just belong to DirectX. If you were to ask "Which is better for doing X, Y and Z?" you'd be closer, but simply asking which is better is off topic. – Byte56 Jun 15 '12 at 19:12

closed as off topic by Byte56, Josh Petrie, Roy T., Patrick Hughes, Jonathan Hobbs Jun 16 '12 at 0:57

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2 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

You should use the latest (non-beta) version of the SDK (which is the June 2010 SDK as of this writing). It will be the most well-supported.

Really, the only reason to use an older release of the SDK is if you are working on maintaining a legacy project that has a dependency on a technology that has been deprecated, such as DirectPlay.

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I had to keep targeting February 2010 for a deployed legacy application, because the effect compiler in June 2010 was slightly stricter when it came to using D3D10 semantics in a D3D9 shader, causing user-sourced shaders to stop working. – Lars Viklund Jun 15 '12 at 18:45
Thanks. I've started working with DirectX since a year ago and for the resources that I found, I decided to start with version 9 because there are major changes after 9. That's my reason :) – MahanGM Jun 15 '12 at 18:58
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The June 2010 SDK still provides Direct3D 9. – Josh Petrie Jun 15 '12 at 20:56
up vote 4 down vote

Agreed, the latest release of the SDK is generally the best one to use, but there are other considerations.

From sometime in 2004 (IIRC) onwards the D3DX stuff moved from being statically linked to dynamically linked. In order to handle this, the player needs a version of D3D that is up to date. In a fit of ingenuity, MS didn't include these up to date versions with either Windows Vista or 7 - I've personally been in a position where people have said "I've D3D11, I'm up to date" but yet don't have the up to date D3DX DLLs for 9. That sucks (and is actually quite difficult to explain to someone).

What sucks even more about this is that certain "power user" (i.e. - someone who has just about enough knowledge for it to be a dangerous thing) websites provide direct downloads of individual DLLs, so people grab these rather than running the proper installer from MS. Cue random and mysterious crashes.

So, in summary, for 9 you have 2 options. Either use use the latest version (and tell people to update their DX install - even if they think it's already up to date), or backtrack all the way to 2004 or thereabouts when D3DX was statically linked and none of this was a problem.

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That was a piece of gold information. I really didn't knew about this change. Thanks for sharing. – MahanGM Jun 16 '12 at 9:09

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