My neighbor in the office, Dave Baumann, and I have been keeping busy over the last few months helping to bring you some very cool products that are just in time for the holidays.  He helped launch the ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 graphics series on September 23, and we launched the ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 graphics series just three weeks later.  When he mentioned he was writing a blog about how the community helped inspire the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series, I figured it was a great opportunity for me to write about some of the questions I get while talking to members of the community.

DirectX 11 & HD Gaming:

You may have already seen a lot on what to expect from DirectX 11, the top 11 reasons for DirectX 11, and so on.   I often get asked “when will DirectX 11 titles begin shipping”.  When I say “quicker than you’d expect…like now”, I get a lot of surprised looks.  Having been through past DirectX transitions, I can’t remember another instance when game developers were this amped about working on a new DirectX version, with ‘AAA’ game titles lining up so quickly.  One of the key reasons for the excitement from the developer community is because they feel DirectX 11 offers them some really cool features that can enable both improved game play performance and new levels of realism.  Check out this YouTube video from DiRT 2 showing some of the features that Codemasters incorporated from DirectX 11, creating an incredibly realistic gaming experience:

On the titles front, I think the rapid development cycle has been aided by our seeding of ATI Radeon HD 5700 series graphics cards for several months prior to launching the product.  As a result, game developers have had a chance to literally play around with the hardware and get a jump on coding awesome games that are scheduled for release in this year and throughout 2010!

Studios around the world have announced support for DirectX 11 – more than 20 titles are in development, with more to come. Here’s a small list of upcoming DirectX 11 titles, with the first two, BattleForge and S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat, available now:

• BattleForge (EA)
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (THQ)
• DiRT 2 (Codemasters)
• Aliens vs. Predator (Rebellion)
• Lord of the Rings: Online (Turbine)
• Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited (Turbine)

Speaking of the latest games, a friend of mine recently picked up a new HD monitor (1920x1200 resolution) as the price was right (under $200).  He tried playing some of the latest games on his new display and quickly discovered that at HD resolutions, his old video card struggled with frame rates.  The ATI Radeon HD 5770 is the perfect solution for situations just like this; it easily handles  today’s game titles at HD resolutions and, with support for DirectX 11, it will be able to play soon-to-be released titles as well.  The best part is that the price of this card is less than the price of many HD monitors.  And if you got a really good deal on those HD monitors why not splurge and buy 3 Then you could use ATI Eyefinity multi-monitor technology to get a truly immersive HD gaming experience.  Imagine being able to see your enemies as they try to sneak up from beside you in first person shooters, or seeing the whole track while driving your car in DiRT 2.

Power Efficiency:

In addition to performance and image quality, gamers care more and more about power efficiency.   For the performance that you’re getting, we’ve never before been able to offer power efficiency like this – the ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics card consumes as little as 16 watts at idle, almost a quarter of the power consumed by a standard 60 watt light bulb! There are lots of reasons to be happy that the GPU is using less power, one of which is the money you save heating your case – it may not be a lot but every little bit helps!

For instance, have you ever been in the middle of a crazy fire fight in Call of Duty 4 when all of a sudden the GPU fan kicks into full gear, drowning out the sound of the bullets whizzing past your head? It really takes you out of the game quickly. Because the ATI Radeon HD 5700 series uses less power (only 108 watts when gaming) and it runs cool – there is less need for the distracting noise of a loud fan.

Because of its low power needs, the ATI Radeon HD 5700 series requires only a single 6 pin power connector.  If you purchased a graphics card about 2 years ago, such as a card in the ATI Radeon HD 3800 series, you’ll already have a 6-pin power connector so this card can be a drop-in replacement. It’s the perfect card for those gamers looking to upgrade.  No need to gut your system when you buy a new power supply!

Media Centers

Media centers or home theater PCs (HTPCs) have been talked about a lot in the past few years.  With the amount of HD content that is available on the web in the form of downloadable or streaming content, it’s easy to see why their popularity is increasing.  With the ATI Radeon HD 5700, you now have the perfect card for use in your Media Center.  Its low power consumption make it an ideal candidate for a media center as it operates quietly, even during HD decoding, due to the 2nd generation unified video decoder (UVD2) processing engine.  A really cool feature is the ability to pass through 8-channel (7.1) lossless high bit rate audio (Dolby TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) that is found on Blu-Ray. In the past, this would have required an additional sound board, a cost of up to $200.  With the ATI Radeon HD 5700, this feature is supported without the need for any additional hardware.

We hope that you have as much fun playing on the ATI Radeon HD 5700 series as we did in building it.  We’d love to hear your comments!

Simon Vivera is the product manager for the ATI Radeon HD 5700 graphics series. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.