Interesting articles about DirectX 11 Graphics Card

AMD set to release DirectX 11 graphics card

The launch of AMD's DirectX 11 graphics card will coincide with Microsoft's Windows 7 launch in October
Advanced Micro Devices will soon launch a graphics card that supports Microsoft's DirectX 11, which aims to make graphics in Windows 7 seem smoother and more realistic.
The release of AMD's first DirectX 11 graphics card would coincide with the launch of Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7, AMD spokesman John Taylor said on Thursday.
The DirectX 11 graphics card will belong to the ATI Radeon line, but Taylor declined further comment on product details or pricing.
The graphics card maker has been demonstrating an ATI Radeon graphics card with DirectX 11 support since June, but has not made a specific product announcement yet.
Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 has built-in support for new DirectX 11 tools, but there is no hardware available yet that supports those tools. With the new card, AMD will beat rival Nvidia to market.
Nvidia has also said it would support DirectX 11, but has not yet made a product announcement. Intel, which mostly offers integrated graphics on chipsets, in June released updated graphics drivers for Windows 7, but offered support for only DirectX 10.
The DirectX 11 tools include a set of APIs for realistic images and better sound when playing games or watching movies. For example, game developers will be able to create smoother and realistic images in a game through better three-dimension modelling.
Most of the discrete graphics cards support existing DirectX 10 and 10.1 tools, which are built into Windows Vista.
DirectX 11 tools are also designed to help Windows 7 recognize multicore systems to improve performance of graphics and other applications.
A feature called "Compute Shader" harnesses the parallel processing capabilities of GPUs (graphics processing units) to improve gaming on PCs. These improvements could make games more realistic through faster frame rates.
The tools also help break up multiple tasks effectively over existing CPU and GPU cores. For example, DirectX 11 will enable video conversion on the fly simply by dragging and dropping video from PCs to portable devices.
It will also accelerate tasks such as image manipulation or DVD playback by off-loading them over CPUs and GPU cores.

Source: AMD set to release DirectX 11 graphics card - amd, directx, graphics cards - PC World

ATI Demonstrates “The Future” DirectX 11 Graphics Cards at Quakecon

ATI’s New Evergreen Graphics Chips Hit Quakecon, Set to Hit the Market by Windows 7 Launch
ATI, graphics business unit of Advanced Micro Devices, may be demonstrating its next-generation DirectX 11 graphics processing units at Quakecon, a video game convention held yearly in Dallas, Texas. The company claims that it has exclusive Area64 room at the show and that it shows next-gen technologies there.

“Area64 will be exclusive access only, meaning, you can try to find it, but its hidden and being kept secret. AMD will be showcasing what we lovingly refer to as ‘The Future’,” said Ian McNaughton, a senior manager of advanced marketing at AMD.
Even though AMD now has a rather broad portfolio of products, it is doubtful that the company demos its 32nm central processing units or next-generation core-logic at a computer game convention. A logical assumption would be demonstration of the next-generation ATI Radeon graphics processing units (GPUs) that support DirectX 11 application programming interface (API) and belong to Evergreen family of GPUs. Mr. McNaughton marked his statement with "DirectX 11" tag, which indirectly confirms that the claim refers to the forthcoming graphics cards.
Back in the days, ATI used Quakecon to show the power of the now legendary ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (R300), the world’s first DirectX 9 graphics processor. In 2002, the company equipped several PCs with the novelty and allowed gamers to try the latest technology and enjoy the unrivalled (back then) performance themselves at Quakecon.
The alleged demonstration of the next-generation graphics cards means that the new boards are in production and that the company is gearing up for the launch of the graphics cards. Another claim in AMD’s official blogs earlier this month says that ATI’s DirectX 11-supporting graphics boards will be available when Microsoft ships its Windows 7, which may mean that the launch is scheduled to take place before the 22nd of October.
“AMD has been working hard to support DirectX 11, so there are plans to make native DirectX 11 hardware from AMD in its ATI Radeon GPUs available when Windows 7 is released,” the statement reads.
ATI demonstrated its first DirectX 11 graphics processors at Computex Taipei 2009 in early June, however, it did not outline any actual timeframes for introduction. The general expectation is that ATI plans to release its chip known under “RV870” and “Evergreen” code-names that is produced using 40nm process technology this Fall.

Source:ATI Demonstrates “The Future� DirectX 11 Graphics Cards at Quakecon - X-bit labs

Nvidia confirms its new GT300 graphics card which is based on the DirectX 11 graphics. As per the latest reports the Nvidia DirectX 11 graphics card GT300 will be launched by the first quarter of 2010. At first company says that the graphics card will be launched in 2009 itself. But due to some problems that wont be done as per schedule but it will be available in large quantities by 2010 Q1.

This GT300 will be the first DirectX11 graphic card from the Nvidia company and this is the one which is mainly targeted at ATI's Evergreen graphic cards. The new GT300 graphics card is based in the 40nm manufacturing technology and there is no reports regarding the pricing of this DirectX11 graphics card.

Source: Tech World: Tech News: Nvidia to launh GT300 DirectX11 graphics card by 2010 Q1

Good post Sassa thanks.
I'm wondering if Nvidia can enable Direct X 11 in their 200 cards with driver updates.
Is it technically possible?
That would be good in the current market as a lot of people can't afford to upgrade their GPU this year or even next.
So if nobody's using the format it'll die on the vine. No games etc.

Cheers, John:)

johnwillyums said:

Good post Sassa thanks.
I'm wondering if Nvidia can enable Direct X 11 in their 200 cards with driver updates.
Is it technically possible?
That would be good in the current market as a lot of people can't afford to upgrade their GPU this year or even next.
So if nobody's using the format it'll die on the vine. No games etc.

Cheers, John:)

I think that it is not possible to enable Direct X 11 with drivers in Direct X 10 card due to hardware uncompatibility, they only can remake 200 series with Direct X 11 support in what I doubt...
Cheers :)

There You can find some technical info about dx11 and backward compatibility with dx10 hardware. So theoretically older card would be partially compatible but it depends on drivers and programmers implementing some new functions.

sirdan said:

There You can find some technical info about dx11 and backward compatibility with dx10 hardware. So theoretically older card would be partially compatible but it depends on drivers and programmers implementing some new functions.

Of course, because dx10 is included in dx11 but dx10 cards can't run new dx11 features.

I think you havent read that article well
Dx11 supports multiple device feature levels like: 11 (full) 10.1 ,10.0 (partial) and even 9.x (!)
Actually older (10.x) hardware can run some new dx11 features:
- Multithrerading,
- Compute shaders (probably based on shader 4.x)
- Tesselator,
- and suppose more. But all this stuff will be limited by the hardware.
What about dx9....? That paper shows that ati released tesselation sdk even for direct3d9. hmm.. but anyone uses it?

There is another article about dx11 in win7. Have a nice reading.

sirdan said:

I think you havent read that article well
Dx11 supports multiple device feature levels like: 11 (full) 10.1 ,10.0 (partial) and even 9.x (!)
Actually older (10.x) hardware can run some new dx11 features:
- Multithrerading,
- Compute shaders (probably based on shader 4.x)
- Tesselator,
- and suppose more. But all this stuff will be limited by the hardware.
What about dx9....? That paper shows that ati released tesselation sdk even for direct3d9. hmm.. but anyone uses it?

That is what I said, you just explained it better...

Edit: OH, i forgot to type "some" in my previous post...