directx11 posts

Since the launch of DirectX11 last fall, it's only been available for destop PC graphics cards. Today during CES, AMD announced plans to launch the first DirectX11-supported graphics chips for notebooks. Due out in notebooks sometime in the first half of this year, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5000 family of chips will extend DirectX11 from budget notebooks to high end gaming PCs.

AMD claims that the upcoming ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 graphics chip is the first such chip for notebook PCs that breaks the teraFLOPS performance barrier. The new chips will also support other ATI graphics chips features such as the multi-monitor Eyefinity support. In related news, AMD has announced that they have shipped 2 million DirectX11 supported graphics chips to its partners.

Remember when an Nvidia rep called ATI's current lead in DirectX11-supported graphics chips "insignificant"? Well, that exec may have to eat his words. According to the sometimes unreliable site DigiTimes, Nvidia's next-gen graphics card, code named Fermi, won't be ready for a release until March 2010.

If true that means AMD's current ATI-branded DirectX11 graphics products could have as much as a five month lead before Nvidia launches their first chip that supports DirectX11 features. Indeed, the same article claims AMD will launch more new mainstream ATI cards in late January or February. Any way you slice it, it's looking more likely that Nvidia has a lot of catching up to do.

At the moment if you want to see and play Dirt 2 with all the DirectX11 effects turned on, you need a graphics card from AMD's ATI division. The company has had graphics card with DirectX11 support for a couple of months now. Meanwhile its main rival Nvidia has been on the sidelines with only hints about a next-generation graphics card, code named Fermi, being released.

However, Nvidia believes AMD's current lead is not all that important. Computerworld reports that Michael Hara, Nvidia's senior vice president of investor relations and communications, stated at a recent conference, "This 60-day lag between these events of when our competition has DX11 and when we're coming to market will absolutely seem insignificant in the big picture." Fermi is currently expected to debut sometime in the first quarter of 2010, but there's currently no specific release date nor hardware specs for the product.

US PC gamers now have a specific release date for the new game in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R first person shooter series. Viva Media announced today that it would be handing the North American publishing duties for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat and would release the game to stores on February 2.

The game, the third in the series from developer GSC Game World, will also be the second game released in the US that will have support for DirectX11 graphics out of the box. It will likely be followed by Aliens Vs Predator which is also expected to be released sometime in February.

US retailers were supposed to get their copies of the PC version of Dirt 2 on December 1 but apparently something happened to stop that. The PC version of Codemasters' driving game didn't make it to stores as planned. Codemasters has now admitted that something happened but they aren't giving any specifics.

According to a post on the game's official message boards, the game's community manager now says the game will ship on December 8. He states, "This is not due to a technical issue in any way shape or form. The actual reason is far to boring to go into to be honest." So we guess we will never know what happened. The game's digital download date has also been changed to December 8.

[Via Blue's News]

Download DiRT 2 Demo (1.31 GB)
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AMD is leading the way with offering DirectX11-based graphics chips under the ATI Radeon brand. Next week the first game in the US with DirectX11 support out of the box, DiRT 2, is due to be released. However it seems that AMD couldn't get CrossFireX support into its latest monthly Catalyst driver updates for the game.

That's why AMD has made the decision to release a ATI driver hotfix update that enables CrossFireX support for DiRT 2. In theory, that should allow the game to have the support of more than one graphics card which should also increase the game's performance on CrossFireX-based PC rig. Meanwhile DiRT 2 for the PC makes its debut on December 1.

Microsoft's last major update to their Games For Windows Live online service was a few months ago with the 3.0 client update. Today the company released a minor update to the the client that can be downloaded when you sign onto the service.

Besides unnamed bug fixes there are two notable upgrades that Microsoft mentions in its release notes. One is an update to the in-game client to "support DirectX 11 for future titles". That's good since the first out-of-the-box DirectX11 title, Codemasters' Dirt 2, is due for release on December 1. The other update is for the downloadable stand alone client "to make finding content for games easier."

[Thanks to TheWax for the tip]

The claim that the newly revealed ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card is indeed the "fastest graphics card in the world" isn't just boasting by parent company AMD. Hardware reviews from a number of web sites have confirmed that the performance of the new card blows away the previous king, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 295.

The big reason for such a boost is AMD's decision to put two of their high end GPUs from ATI on one card. That should enable the card to run upcoming DirectX11 PC games like Dirt 2, Aliens Vs Predator and Battlefield Bad Company 2 with all of the graphics turned up but still have a decent frame rate. Of course you will have to pay a whopping $600 for that privilege. Nvidia, we have to ask . . . where are you and why are you letting AMD beat you like this?

You can now add Battlefield Bad Company 2 to the list of upcoming games that will be supporting the new DirectX11 graphics API. The Tech Report has received an updated list of all the officially announced DirectX11 game titles from AMD which currently has the only graphics card that supports DirectX11.

The list of games and game engines that will have DirectX11 features has been growing slowly ever since the first titles were revealed a few months ago. Currently there's just two titles that support DirectX11; the RTS game Battleforge (via a patch) and the Russian and German versions of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat. The next DirectX11 game due in stores is the PC version of Dirt 2 which will ship on December 1.

Codemasters surprised many people when they decided to delay the release of the PC version of Dirt 2. As it turns out the rally racing game will now become the first PC title to support DirectX11 graphics out of the box when it ships to stores on December 1 (Battleforge is the first DirectX11 game via a patch last month).

Codemasters has now posted the system requirements for the game on the Dirt 2 message boards. While the rest of us mortals can still run the game in non-DirectX11 mode you will need a beefy PC rig to play the game with the updated graphics. Check out the requirements after the jump.