Like a pesky video game villain that just won’t go away, Microsoft’s DirectX has been a mainstay of mainstream PC gaming pretty much since the inception. Its existence hasn’t been without its tensions, however, with notable graphics guru John Carmack of id Software ignoring it in favor of OpenGL — until last week when he finally acknowledged that Direct3D had outgrown its cross-platform alternative and was now the preferable API for PC game development. That’s all well and good, but plenty of game devs, says Richard Huddy, head of AMD’s developer relations team, don’t want any API at all. Huddy points out the sadly obvious fact that modern graphics cards can pretty much stomp any console hardware into the dirt in a straight fight and yet fail to show the full extent of their superiority in actual game visuals. He’d prefer to see developers given direct low-level access to the hardware, so they can maximize their own talents and really push things forward. Of course, the beauty of DirectX is that it’s a standard that every Windows game designer can code to, leading to predictable and more widely compatible (if not necessarily spectacular) results. For more on how the future’s shaping up, hit the links below.

Game developers want DirectX to ‘go away,’ says AMD man originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 04:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HyperX 24G 1600Mhz Memory Demo! huge demo, more memory and faster than ever. Intel Core i7, AMD DirectX 11 graphics, Asus mobo., Coolermaster cooling
Video Rating: 4 / 5

There’s been a lot of buzz about the code-name Fermi series of cards NVIDIA has been cooking up. They’re the company’s first DirectX 11-compatible cards, and rival AMD has had the DX11 58xx series on the market for months now, giving them a definite head start. The hope (among NVIDIA fans) was that the Fermi/GF100 cards would blow AMD’s out of the water despite the delays. That doesn’t seem to be the case: although the new GTX 480 flagship card is competitive with AMD’s best, it doesn’t blow it away by any means, and the feature set ends up being the deciding factor.

Here are some reviews by our favorite hardware sites:

• Hot Hardware
• PC Perspective
• HardOCP
• Neoseeker
• Guru3D
• ExtremeTech

And if you’re crazy, check out Maingear’s triple-SLI setup. Give me a break!

They don’t all agree — HardOCP found nothing to like about the mid-range GTX 470, while PC Perspective thought it a great bargain — so if you’re in the market, it might be worthwhile to wait a month and see what secondary vendors are going to offer in terms of custom clocking, better heat management, and so on. Drivers will also be improved once the cards are out there and bug reports and performance data start streaming in.

The first reviews of major hardware releases like this are always hotly anticipated in case, as was the case with ATI’s 48xx series, they totally serve the competition. That didn’t happen in this case, but depending on your needs and existing setup, the new NVIDIA cards could easily be the hardware for you.

ATI just released a new, super entry level graphics card that should placate, well, not hardcore gamers, but most regular people. It’s the Radeon 5450. Like other 5000 series cards, it works with Eyefinity, meaning that you can spread the image across several screens, as this image swiped from Tom’s Hardware shows.

The card supports DirectX 11, don’t expect to run Crysis at 1920×1200. (It does run the game at lower resolutions, though.) I don’t even know why I wrote this, since the card isn’t aimed at gamers. You want to game, get yourself a Radeon 5850 or 5970. (I’m unfamiliar with Nvidia’s naming schemes.)

Turns out the card isn’t too shabby at all if you’re looking to build a home theater PC. The 5450 works wonders for that, pushing 1080p video just fine.

I don’t know, it’s an everyday card for everyday people at an everyday price: $50.

Pop quiz, hot shot: you release a product to tepid critical response. Despite having a good concept behind it, it’s slow, limited, and performs badly in low light. After a year and a half, you release its sequel, which is better but still not really that good. What do you do?

A) Forget this approach, try something new like Micro Four-Thirds
B) Get a decent lens on that thing and improve responsiveness
C) Tell her that you want her love
D) Release a new version of the old product with such changes as it would take an expert in these things to see the difference. Delude yourself into thinking these minor shortcomings were the reason your product was received so poorly.

If you chose D, you’re Sigma!

Seriously, the DP1 was never a great camera, and the DP2 was a minor update. And now they come out with this DP1s? It’s like Microsoft coming out with Vista (plus DirectX 11) after Windows 7 comes out. What an utterly inexplicable move this is!

[via Photo Rumors]

By Chris Scott Barr

Being a gamer, I tend to watch the release of new video cards rather carefully. Well in case you missed it, AMD released the first DirectX 11 cards last month. This allowed them to take the crown for fastest card and left Nvidia in the dust so to speak. Anyone that’s paid attention to these releases over the years will know that Nvida won’t be far behind with their own DX11 cards. In fact, we now know that they will be hitting stores before the end of the year.

Nvida has stated that they will have their latest cards, dubbed the GT300 out in time for ‘Black Friday.’ That gives AMD a 2 month head-start into the market. The big question is whether or not people are going to jump on AMD’s offerings, or wait to see what kind of performance the new GT300 cards show. Either way, it’s going to be an interesting holiday season.

[ Nvidia ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]