AMD still keen on the importance of DX11 in 2009

Subject: Graphics Cards | June 23, 2009 - 05:42 PM | Ryan Shrout
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It would seem that AMD execs are still out for blood when it comes to the pending battle for Windows 7 and DX11 gaming. In a story posted over at the Inquirer, AMD's Rick Bergman is quoted as saying that developer support for DX11 will be much quicker than the adoption of DX10 and should come even before the end of the year.

Bergman, AMD's SVP for platforms told the INQ one would have to go back to DX9 to see a comparable jump in terms of wow factor for engineers and game developers, which is part of the reason the firm is pushing so hard to be first to market with DX11-ready hardware.

Bergman rejected the INQ's claim that only a minimal amount of game titles this year would take advantage of DX11, saying he knew of four to five ISVs working "eagerly" to churn out games and remarking he'd seen "great progress."

If you remember, ATI had the first DX9 cards out and NVIDIA had the first DX10 cards on the market. In both of those cases, the first one to market was arguably the market leader - developers had those particular architectures in their hands first and thus were more apt to target them for performance considerations.

AMD showed off working DX11 silicon at Computex this June

Bergman says essentially just that:

"We want to supply hardware to Microsoft and software developers so they can make DX11 games on our hardware first," Bergman told us, adding that it would put his firm in a good position for the future.

Meanwhile, over at Charlie's new hang out, he has posted a quick note that mentions AMD will have not just one DX11 part come this fall, but an entire family of GPUs prepped and ready for the Windows 7 release:

A LOT OF people don't understand the train that is heading at Nvidia this fall, most pundits think that the red locomotive only has Cypress trees on it. They would be wrong, there are not one but at least four cards coming in October, possibly a bit before.

Windows 7, aka Me II Sp7, will be greeted by a line of ATI cards ranging from top to low middle. If you thought ATI had only one chip back from the fabs, well, you would be wrong. If you are looking for DX11 cards this fall, you will have a full range to choose from, but they all will have red logos on them.

He also continues to believe that NVIDIA will completely miss the Windows 7 launch with any of its DX11 parts and MAY miss it by as much as 5-6 months.

So it looks like the lines have been drawn for the rest of 2009's GPU wars. On side, you'll have AMD touting the benefits of DX11 gaming and Windows 7 while on the other NVIDIA will be talking about CUDA and GPU computing performance as much as possible until OpenCL comes around and completely rains on any advantage their software team has created for them.

Looks like 2009 will be very interesting. Really.

Source: PC Perspective

PC Perspective

AMD still keen on the importance of DX11 in 2009

Subject: Graphics Cards | June 23, 2009 - 05:42 PM | Ryan Shrout Tagged:

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Subject: Graphics Cards | June 23, 2009 - 05:42 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: