nVidia FX == DirectX 9 Compatibility

There has been a lot of discussion on why nVidia's FX running Half Life 2 slower then ATi's offering people jump to wild conclusions, like "ATi & Valve are out to screw nVidia". Or better yet I like this one, "Valve optimized their game to ATi's hardware because they teamed up with ATi". When it came down to it, ATi & Valve have followed Microsofts strict DX9 specifications where nVidia's GeForce FX has not. nVidia is promoting Direct X 9 Compatibility and isn't directly saying the card is "DirectX 9". One of our readers, Xzibit-A brings us some word on the subject:


Microsoft DirectX 9 is the issues here with Half-Life 2. Nividia from the start presented Microsoft with its new code for their NV3x. When Microsoft publicly annouced the final DirectX 9 API Nvidia started shouting foul because it didnt get its way and put them at a disadvantage because they wanted they're code to be the standard. ATI was behind but decided to make there next gen chip cater to DirectX 9. Which is why its at an advantage cause it uses the standard and no programmers have to re-code their products to make them run specificly for a certain hardware.

Nvidia thought it could convince Microsoft to make their code standard to take advantage of their architecture. That was the biggest mistake. Now they have to put out Driver updates for each game that comes under DirectX 9 until they can put out NV4x chip family and hopefully correct their problem.
We all could give a million excuses to why nVidia's FX is slow in DX9 applications, but the fact remains is that the FX isn't a true DX9 derivative built card. The specs on each card tell the story