I see people going on in these forums “wow, this card will have DX9 capability”, does DirectX 9 have anything to do with OpenGL? If your an OpenGL programmer, does the release of a new DX version make ANY difference? Just interested, because you dont really ever see a vid card advertising (OpenGL 1.4 capable) or something.
Yes, actually. Especially if you intend upon using OpenGL 2. For instance, you get a full 32 bit floating point rendering pipeline. Err, rendering path.
Oh yeah, I wantt a GF5… now watch me never get it 
Most (if not all) graphics chips are now designed to support maximum number of DX caps in hardware. OpenGL is rarely taken into account in the design process (talking abut consumer level cards, right?).
But look at it this way, you see Carmack going on aboiut how the new ATI card is cool and stuff, and that it has DX9, why would HE care if it had DX9 capability if he uses OGL, i mean, is there any benefit for him?
Oh yeah, I wantt a GF5… now watch me never get it
I bet you wont get one, as there never will be a GF5. The NV30 being a brand new design will not be a geforce… Minor point!
Most DX9 featurescan be implemented in opengl, once the drivers are done I think.
Once OpenGL 2.0 is fully finalised and drivers made then getting a dx9 card would be great but for now the gains are a bit more modest.
any ideas about the opengl roadmap?
I see that NV have just released 1.4 compatible drivers. How long realistically do we have to wait for 2.0?
If someone says that a card has DX9 capability do they mean that the card supports the new DX functions in hardware. The statement is about the card and not that they will use DX9. The same hardware capability is exposed by OpenGL. Another common expression with the same meaning is “DX9 class hardware”.