Custom Palit HD 4850 For Less Than 160 USD
Microsoft Announces DirectX 11 API
Custom Palit HD 4850 For Less Than 160 USD
Referring to Chinese GPUFans, the source published photos of an HD 4850 card that is being prepared for release by Palit.
The solution is interesting because it doesn't copy the reference design introduced a month ago. As you can see on images below, TV-Out is replaced by HDMI. Also note the dual-slot width of the back plate.
According to the source, Palit has not yet decided on a cooling solution. As you remember, a custom cooler has also been used in PowerColor's HD 4850 2GB.
Palit HD 4850 is claimed to be priced about 142-157 USD.
Source: Hardspell
Microsoft Announces DirectX 11 API
At GameFest 2008 in Seattle, Microsoft made a rather interesting and expected announcement of DirectX 11 API that is said to be fully compatible with the current DirectX 10.
So, what might gamers expect from transition to the new API? According to the sources, developers call DirectX 11 a kind of a bugfix of DirectX 10, its more advanced version.
Microsoft plans to make DirectX 11 as simple as possible for game developers, and calls it a long step towards perfecting of gameplay. The new API has the following innovations compared to DirectX 10:
- Complete support (including hardware capabilities) by Windows Vista and future OSes (but not Windows XP);
- Compatibility with hardware supporting DirectX 10 and 10.1;
- New shader technology that allows using GPU not only as a 3D processor, but also as a massively parallel processor;
- Better support for multi-core configurations;
- Support for curved surface tesselation to negate differences between pre-rendered high-resolution graphics and real-time graphics.
Microsoft plans to finish the DirectX 11 development by late 2008 / early 2009. And games supporting new API should be expected late next year.
Source: Shacknews, Kotaku, GameTech
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