Microsoft speaks DirectX 10

Windows Graphics Foundation is now DirectX 10. I guess DirectXX sounded too much like a porn movie for Microsoft's tastes.

Quote from the article ...

The DirectX 10 API will have completely new and faster dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and is supposed to run much faster. The company decided to cut the backward compatibility with DirectX 9, 8, 7 and lower in this API but there will be a way to use games programmed for those APIs. Microsoft will enable support for DX 9 or lower games through a software layer, meaning it might run slower.

This means that DirectX 9 games will be running through an emulation layer of what was already an abstraction layer to begin with. This doesn't bode well for performance freaks.