AMD is said to launch the first DirectX 11 compliant graphics circuit in the form of RV870 this summer. AMD is a bit ahead of schedule with the rest of the RV8xx family too. AMD's chef Dirk Meyer has namely revealed that it will launch a wave of DX11 compliant graphics cards after the summer based on the new 40nm manufacturing process. If AMD can stick to its new schedule we should see a whole bunch of DX11 graphics cards in several market segments before the end of the year.
And for once this may not be a relatively empty upgrade as DirectX 11 has turned out to be very easy to work with. Game developers at DICE revealed that it took them about three hours to port the Frostbite graphics engine from DirectX 10 to DirectX 11. The Frostbite engine is used in Battlefield Bad Company 2.
Battlefield Bad Company 2 using DICE's Frostbite Engine
Among the advantages of the new API there are great possibilities to reduce CPU overload, but since there is no finished DX11 hardware the exact results is uncertain.
From what it seems DirectX 11 will be available with multiple games before we even have compatible hardware, which is of course a positive surprise. Not just to consumers but also AMD that is betting hard on the new API.
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