Even though the official release of Windows 7 is still three weeks away or so, the very first PC game with support for the OS's new DirectX11 3D graphics API is already out there right now. And believe it or not it's BattleForge, the free-to-play fantasy RTS game from Electronic Arts and its developer EA Phenomic.

The patch to enable DirectX11 support was in fact released last week to its users and according to BattleForge's official web site the patch will allow the game to "have a higher frame rate and new ways of creating graphical effects, such as shadows and lighting" on DirectX11 based PCs. Of course, most players of the game won't notice the difference at all. That's because the DirectX11 support requires both Windows 7 to be installed (Windows Vista will also support DirectX11 but that support has yet to be enabled) and a DirectX11-based video card be a part of the gaming rig. At the moment only two video graphics chips support DirectX11 and they both come from AMD. Graphics cards based on the company's ATI Radeon HD 5870 chip went on sale just last week and cards based on the the ATI Radeon HD 5850 goon sale today.