directx 9 with visual studio 2012 express

issamfaz

I decided to learn directx on my old laptop that has an ATI Radeon X1200 card.
Using the program GPU-Z.0.7.2 I found that my card support directx 9 /SM2.0 and has shadrers of 4 Pixel / 2 Vertex.
Using dxdiag on my windows 7 I found that directx version is directx 11. Then I downloaded visual studio 2012 express but I did not install it yet.
Since my card supports only directx 9 im going to read the book Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.
Now what version of the direct SDK do I have to download ? and after downloading the SDK what should I install first the SDK or visual studio 2012 express ? Is the book ok ? I mean there are other editions of the book but they supprt directx 9c , directx 10 and directx 11.

Thank u so much.

OceanJeff40

You can use Direct X 9 SDK of course, to learn with the book. You can also program and create programs for Direct X 11, but obviously you can't test the 11 functionality and interfaces, etc. But you can easily install the Direct X 11 SDK and program with the .lib and etc files, I would only recommend the direct x 9 sdk for the documentation. You are able to call the Direct X 9 interfaces with a Direct X 11 SDK install, so it should be fine.

As I understand it, it's been a while since I've used Direct X, I use the DARK GDK which is a wrapper for Direct X, and it's free from microsoft. Check it out, if you are interested.

Hope this helps,

Jeff C