DirectX 11 comes to Vista

Windows 7 users have been having all the DirectX 11 fun up until now. Well, ok, there really isn't much DX11 fun to be had so far, but running Win7 was the only place possible to run DX11 up until now. As promised, Microsoft has brought the newest, bestest version of DirectX to Vista. Making the XP standouts now 2 complete version behind. DirectX 11 isn't a huge leap forward over DX10 in terms of graphical capability, but it makes things a lot easier and streamlined for the devs using the high quality capabilities. And it's more efficient for the end users, meaning higher fps with the graphics still looking purty.

Right now the only GPU capable of unlocking DirectX 11 goodness is the ATI Radeon 5000 series. Owners of those can check out the first DX11 tech demo. People not quite so luck can just watch some DX11 effects via YouTube.

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ATI Radeon HD 5870 sings "We're gonna run this town tonight"

ATI/AMD's new HD 5870 card is here, and it's making quite the entrance. It's getting marvelous reviews from all the people allowed to have one right now. They aren't only pleased with the excellent performance from the card, but also it's incredible power savings. It's also launching near a price point of $380, which means hopefully the day of the $600 flagship video cards is over. Promised features like DirectX 11 support and Eyefinity are also there. So ATI has shown their hand first, lets see what Nvidia has up their stream processors in the upcoming GT300 to compete.

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AMD appeases bezel lovers with Eyefinity

AMD/ATI will be shipping their new DirectX 11 Radeon video cards soon. Exact specifics of these cards hasn't been announced yet, but they are showing off a new feature of the cards with EyeFinity. Essentially Eyefinity is over-haul to the multimonitor capabilities that most people are familiar with in their current cards. It will be able to run between 3-6 displays, depending on the type of card, via DisplayPort, HDMI or DVI. These displays can be run using the Single Large Surface (SLS) software to have one giant desktop spanning all displays. You could also group the monitors in various ways, or just have them run as independent displays like normal.

AMD has also partnered with some monitor manufacturers that will have thin bezel displays that are designed to work best for Eyefinity setups, such as Samsung:



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