We’ve known a lot about Windows Phone 7, but not so much about the guts of the OS. Well, now we know a lot more – like that a Windows Live ID is tied in pretty tightly. More »
We didn’t see much of a difference between DirectX 10.1 and 11, but if you’re a Windows Vista user who did then be happy because DirectX 11 is now finally available through Windows Update. [DailyTech]
AMD demoed their buzzed-about DirectX 11 graphics processor at the Computex show in Taiwan, offering proof that they’re making progress in getting to market first with their product.
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]
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.
