True, on the microsoft site, a DirectX9 card will work fine. And about the games, you should be able to play them cause if a company comes out with a game that can only run with DX10 right away, how many people are goin to buy it? You have to realize that companies aim for the average consumer, not the high end gamer like people on TF. Just give that a thought.you do realize that it WILL work with windows vista, just that you wont be able to play DX10 games w/ dx10 graphics on
another thing, you could get a 512MB X1800XT for around the same price... (sry i'm an ATI Fanboy), and the 1800XT comes with higher core and memory clock speeds.