DirectX 8.1 Final

[Wombat]

There are possibly (hopefully?) big changes in DirectPlay. The anti-game-hacking community has been wary of the WinXP release.
DirectPlay made it harder to hide a proxy that would cheat for you, since tampering with Win9x's sockets was detectable. Previous versions of DX never had to consider the raw sockets.

[Indiana]

Originally posted by Gurm
DrZaius:

Yes, you should always get the latest DirectX. Several reasons:

1. Games will soon require it (ALWAYS happens).

Very true. Some games even pretend to need new DX versions even though they don't really use the new features....

2. It fixes bugs.

Sometimes. Sometimes only to introduce new bugs (as is always true with software and especially when it comes from MicroSoft).

3. It runs faster.

Nope, not really. DX8 wasn't faster than DX7 (even slower for some games) and DX8.1 seems to be a bit slower for most things than 8.0.