January 18, 2009

AMD ATI Radeon HD 5670

www.amd.com

AMD has introduced the ATI Radeon HD 5670 graphics card, the latest addition to the award-winning line-up of the world’s first and only graphics products to fully support Microsoft DirectX 11 gaming and computing, as well as new innovations such as ATI Eyefinity technology. Priced at less than USD $100, the ATI Radeon HD 5670 graphics card enables a superior HD gaming experience in the latest DirectX 11 titles, employs ATI Stream technology to boost performance in video playback and productivity applications, and helps enable the full Windows 7 experience.

Big performance, small price.

The ATI Radeon HD 5670 graphics card delivers up to 620 GigaFLOPS of compute power and GDDR5 memory, delivering unprecedented gaming performance for under USD $100 in the latest DirectX 11 titles such as Codemaster’s Colin McRae: DiRT 2, EA Phenomic’s BattleForge, GSC Game World’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 as well as DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL titles. In some of today’s most popular games, the ATI Radeon HD 5670 graphics processor showed a more than 20% performance improvement over the closest competing product in its class.

Panoramic computing hits the mainstream

The latest in ATI Eyefinity technology enables up to three displays to be used with a single ATI Radeon HD 5670 graphics card, delivering the most immersive gaming experience with a graphics card for under $100.

Accelerate with ATI Stream technology
ATI Stream technology speeds up video transcoding and improves video playback performance with applications such as Adobe Flash, and helps to deliver video enhancements that produce better visual quality with sharper, more vibrant images.

“AMD recently celebrated the shipment of its two millionth DirectX 11 graphics chip. AMD has already enabled DirectX 11 support for the majority of the PC market and today’s introduction of the ATI Radeon HD 5670 graphics card is yet another  clear indication of AMD’s commitment to address the strong market demand for DirectX 11-capable graphics cards,” said Matt Skynner, VP and general manager, AMDGraphics Group.  ”Combined with the successful launches of the ATI Radeon HD 5970, ATI Radeon HD 5800 series and ATI Radeon HD 5700 series, AMD has defined the DirectX 11 gaming experience like no other, bringing graphics innovations like ATI Eyefinity technology and ATI Stream technology to millions of consumers worldwide.”

“DICE prides itself on delivering the best possible experience to gamers, and ATI Radeon graphics cards help us to do that with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 through the use of DirectX 11 and our Frostbite engine,” said Johan Andersson. ”The fact that AMD has now shipped two million DirectX 11 graphics processors demonstrates how excited gamers are by the awesome performance and feature set of the latest ATI Radeon products.”

By Jason Cross
November 3, 2009

Microsoft has long said, and we have reminded users, that DirectX 11 is not just a Windows 7 technology. The company promised that DirectX 11 will be available for Vista around the same time as the release of its latest and greatest operating system.

And so it has come to pass. Vista users who check Windows Update should see a rather generic “Platform Update” with the reference KB971644. The update is available for Windows Server 2008 as well. In addition to adding DirectX 11, this update adds and XPS document printing library, the Windows Automation API, and an update to the Windows Portable Devices Platform.

Note that DirectX 11 adds DirectCompute, which comes in three flavors - DirectCompute shader model 4.0, 4.1, and 5.0. The 4.0 version contains features allowing it to be run on most DirectX 10 graphics hardware. The 4.1 version is similar, but for DX 10.1 hardware. The 5.0 version of DirectCompute shaders requires DX11 hardware, and is far more robust.

My point is, this update could be useful for Vista users even if you don’t have one of those nifty new Radeon 5000 series graphics cards that will run DirectX 11. You’ll need it to run DirectCompute accelerated apps (when they start to appear) even on DX10 hardware, and the update contains some other nice updates.

By the way, the update is listed as “Recommended” and may not be automatically applied if you have Windows Update set only to apply critical updates. You may want to check manually.

At a press conference in Taipei, Taiwan, AMD publicly demonstrated the world’s first Microsoft DirectX 11 graphics processor. The series of demonstrations shed new light on the significantly improved computing experience set to debut at the end of 2009. The fusion of AMD’s new graphics processors with the forthcoming DirectX 11 programming interface is set to change both applications and PC gaming for the better. To illustrate, AMD showed numerous examples of faster application performance and new game features using the world’s first true DirectX 11 graphics processor.

Get ready for a revolution: Games and other applications are about to get a lot better as a result of AMD’s new graphics hardware and DirectX 11.  DirectX 11 features such as tessellation will bring consumers higher quality, superior performing games making use of 6th generation AMD technology. Another DirectX 11 feature, the compute shader, will enable AMD’s DirectX 11 graphics cards to help make Windows 7 run faster in a wide number of applications and in a manner that’s completely transparent to users, for example, in seamlessly accelerating the conversion of video for playback on portable media players through a drag-and-drop interface.

DirectX 11 done right on AMD: The development of DirectX 11 has been broadly influenced by AMD graphics technology.  Each new version of DirectX builds on the versions that came before it, and many of the capabilities of DirectX 11 were pioneered on AMD GPUs, including DirectX 10.1, tessellation, compute shaders, Fetch4, custom filter anti-aliasing and high-definition ambient occlusion shading.

Bringing consumers DirectX 11 sooner: The preview of the world’s first DirectX 11 graphics processor at Computex 2009 validates AMD’s commitment to delivering leading technologies to market before anyone else, and to continuing to foster innovation in computing.

Fueling developer demand: It’s not just consumers who are excited about the prospects of DirectX 11, game developers are also incredibly enthusiastic about taking advantage of new DirectX 11 hardware to bring even better games to market, in large part due to AMD’s readiness to meet their DirectX 11 needs.  Many developers have indicated their commitment to building DirectX 11 games initially on AMD’s DirectX 11 hardware, delivering superior performance and compatibility.

“AMD has a long track record of delivering pioneering features that have gone on to become mainstays in the DirectX experience, and we’re doing it again with two mature, AMD-developed technologies in DirectX 11 - tessellation and the compute shader - both of which enable a better DirectX 11 experience for consumers,” said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President, AMD Products Group.  “Today, we’re previewing AMD’s DirectX 11 graphics processor to build enthusiasm for this key technology so developers will have games available at launch and shortly thereafter.  With the benefits it delivers to gaming, applications and Windows 7, developers are lining up to get their hands on our hardware, and we’re confident that consumers will too.”