AMD Demonstrates World’s First Microsoft DirectX 11 Graphics Processor

 

AMD/ATI are upping the ante this year it seems, beating their Nemesis Nvidia to most targets GPU manufacturers dream about reaching first. Not long ago the ATI driver team announced the first fully WHQL certified drivers for Windows 7 and today AMD demonstrated the world’s first DX11 GPU in all its glory. The first ATI DX11 GPU is expected to arrive late 2009 provided all goes well at this stage of development.

 

Whilst this is all well and good you will no doubt want a peek as to what DX11 has instore for us. Tesselation is the most ground breaking feature to come in the DX11 package, which many of you will already be aware of. Its purpose is simply to enable games developers to create smoother, less blocky, and more lifelike objects making characters and scenery in games much more realistic.

 

The next new feature is the Compute Shader. This will allow programmers to take a freer approach when dealing with physics and artificial intelligence. This GPGPU technology will dramatically speed up numerous applications in Windows 7 providing seamlessly accelerated conversion of video for playback on portable media players through a drag-and-drop interface.

 

AMD claim that DirectX 11 is done right on AMD. Many of the DX11 capabilities were pioneered on AMD GPUs some of which include DX 10.1, tessellation, compute shaders, custom filter anti-aliasing and high-definition ambient occlusion shading. AMD show renewed commitment to bringing DX11 GPUs to consumers first, continuing to lead the way in GPU innovation.

 

AMD and consumers aren’t the only ones excited by the prospect of DX11. Game developers see the new package as an excellent tool for game innovation and appear enthusiastic overall. Developers are apparently lining up to get in on the DirectX 11 action from AMD. Will you be too? Discuss in our Forums.