AMD has confirmed rumours that it is working on DirectX 11, announcing at CEATEC that it plans to release its first DirectX 11-compatible GPUs in 2009. The company also predicted an increase in general purpose computing on GPUs (GPGPU) and a transition to a 40nm fabricating standard, which ought to give graphics chip performance rates a considerable boost. In layman terms: Things are about to get a lot bigger and a lot prettier. [Xbit Labs via Tweaktown]

DirectX 11 is coming, and it looks pretty awesome. Sure, you get advancements in shading and better support for multi-core machines, but what's really got our heads turning is the concept of letting programmers use the GPU in your video card to do some of the heavy lifting, meaning your graphics chip becomes a second, parallel processor. While the idea itself isn't new, this is the first we've heard of DirectX using such technology and we're sure it'll have PC gaming fanboys drooling when it rolls out, whenever that happens to be. [Joystique]

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British site The Inquirer is reporting from Siggraph 2007 that the next version of DirectX, 10.1, requires spanking new hardware to support its sort of spanking new features.

The spec revision basically makes a number of things that are optional in DX10 compulsory under the new standard - such as 32-bit floating point filtering, as opposed to the 16-bit current. 4xAA is a compulsory standard to support in 10.1, whereas graphics vendors can pick and choose their anti-aliasing support currently.

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As expected, the ATI Radeon 2000 series have been launched, starting at less than $99 for the 2400 series, $99 to $199 for the 2600 series and $399 for the ATI Radeon 2900 XT. The new cards come with 65-nm GPU, 512-bit memory bus, second generation Unified Shader Architecture, new Unified Video Decoder for HD multimedia playback and obligatory DirectX 10 support.

Also as expected, none of the models come with the belly dancers that were at the AMD press event in Tunis. Too bad, because maybe that would have distracted us from the fact that the latest Radeon cards seem to get spanked by their NVIDIA counterparts, which apparently offer higher performance and lower consumption while compared to sample cards provided by ATI. In any case, you will find the belly dancer after the jump, along with complete official specs for the 2900 XT.

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You can't have a new laptop without a bump in the graphics department. Today NVIDIA bought its GeForce 8xxx series GPUs to the mobile world, introducing them as the 8600M and 8400M (GeForce 8M Series). These GPUs are the first ones to bring DirectX 10 compatibility to your notebook, In addition, they also promise better HD video processing without taxing your CPU. – Louis Ramirez

Press Release

If the thought of bringing DirectX 10 functionality to your non-Vista machine sounds enticing, you'll wanna check out the Alky Project. No, it has nothing to do with liquor, but instead it's a project developed by 19-year-old Cody Brocious to bring the DirectX 10 platform (gaming in particular) to Windows XP, Mac and Linux users.

There's an alpha available that works (in most occasions) and a $50 donation gives you dibs on development builds and perks. We wish Cody the best of luck, but side with Ars on this one in saying that its ambitious goals require more resources than one person. – Louis Ramirez

Project Aims to Bring DX10 Gaming to XP, Linux, OS X [Ars Technica via FayerWayer]

The GeForce 8600 and 8500 got Nvidia's official blessing today. The two new video cards are mid-range alternatives to the mighty GeForce 8800, bringing DirectX 10 and HD support to your PC at a lower price. At the top sits the GeForce 8600 GTS ($199-$229) with a 675MHz core, 32 shader processors, and 2GHz memory speeds while the 8500 GT ($89-$129) packs a pokier 450MHz core with 800MHz memory speeds.

There will also be a slightly less expensive 8600 GT ($149-$159) with 540MHz clock and 1.4GHz memory. The folks at PNY should be one of the first to offer the cards (considering yesterday's leak). Now all we gotta do is sit back and wait for ATI's response. – Louis Ramirez

Press Release [via Electronista]