Supported Systems
SlimDX supports a wide range of APIs, operating systems, and configurations.
All versions of Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008, and 7 are supported, for both 32 and 64 bit.
There is a minimum requirement of .NET 2.0, but any subsequent version (including or excluding service packs) will work.
Notable Features
Interoperability
SlimDX has full support for sharing DirectX objects with other libraries.
All SlimDX objects expose their native pointers for use by other code, and SlimDX can wrap native pointers with its own objects.
This allows seamless cooperation with libraries such as DirectShow.NET, CUDA.NET, native code DirectX libraries, and more.
64-bit Systems and "Any CPU"
SlimDX includes x64 bit assemblies, and is the
only DirectX interface for .NET to do so.
The redistributable and SDK installers automatically register the correct assemblies.
Applications can also compile for the "Any CPU" architecture when using SlimDX, and the correct version will be selected.
As a result, SlimDX based applications can smoothly target both x86-32 and x86-64 bit machines without the headaches introduced by other similar libraries.
(Itanium IA64 is not a supported configuration, sorry.)
Performance
Performance is a crucial factor in all of the design work done on SlimDX, and the team works carefully to ensure that overhead is kept to a minimum. SlimDX has proven to
be faster than both XNA and MDX in several performance tests, although the margin is often negligible. Additionally, an experimental offshoot of SlimDX called SlimGen
that is still under development promises to bring SIMD support straight into the math library, boosting performance considerably.
.NET 4.0 Support
SlimDX is the
only DirectX interface for .NET to provide full .NET 4.0 binaries. This means no having to go through extra
configuration steps to ensure that your .NET 4.0 application can use SlimDX properly.
