Yes, you'll need a DX10 compatible graphics card to use DX10 (and such a card does not exist yet). DX10 is introducing some pretty major changes to the programming API - much bigger than the jump from dx8 to dx9 for example - and the current hardware simply isn't build in a way that can support the new DX10 features. On the other hand, the new DX10 cards will very likely be backwards compatible so they'll be able to run dx9 games at full speed.
Usually when a new DirectX version comes out Microsoft will continue to ship runtimes for a few versions back to support games that were build on older APIs so I think it sounds a bit funny that they'll software emulate the DX9 API (even on new state-of-the-art machines that would run quite slowly) - but if the other poster in this thread has read otherwise I guess it might be true. Where did you see this information that DX9 would be emulated?
- Telemachos
