Along with Windows 7 to be released in October, Microsoft will also officially release its latest version of DirectX. Not only developed for Windows 7, DirectX 11 can also be used by Vista users with Service Pack 2 installed. DirectX 11 is claimed to bring many benefits and new features called Direct Compute (GPGPU) and Tesselation. But unfortunately for XP users, DirectX 11 will no longer support this old but popular operating system.

To fully utilize all these latest DirectX features, you must have a DirectX 11 based graphics card. AMD becomes the first vendor to introduce its new Radeon 5800 series lineup. nVIDIA will be a bit late this time, nVIDIA is reported to is not yet ready to offer its GT300 series until the first quarter of 2010. For those who are still using DirectX 10 or 10.1 cards, they can still get some benefits of DirectX 11 since it is an older version. compatible with the previous version. But… the question: Is DirectX 11 really worth waiting for or is it just another marketing hype?

There are 2 main features promised by DirectX 11:

1. Tessellation

– Allows game developers to create smoother, less blocky, and more organic looking objects in games. As the most anticipated feature, it promises to create natural objects without sacrificing game performance.

2. Direct computing (GPGPU)

– Allows gamers to treat the GPU in a much less graphics-oriented way; in fact, they can almost treat it like a highly parallel CPU. By using this feature, the GPU will be used more often to execute tasks faster than the CPU is capable of. So your GPU will not be used solely for gaming purposes.

Since DirectX 11 is very new, there are no games available yet to test the above theories at this time. But unlike DirectX 10, which saw very slow adoption, DirectX 11 has faster compatible titles to benefit from this latest technology such as: Dirt 2, Stalker: Call of Pripyat, BattleForge, Alien vs Predator, Crysis 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, etc.

Stalker: COP has even submitted its first DirectX 11 vs DirectX 10 image comparison.

So, answering the question about whether or not it is worth upgrading to DirectX 11 graphics card, the answer would be: It depends. In my opinion, if you already have the Radeon 4800 series or the nVIDIA GT200 series, you can stick with your current card and wait until DirectX 11 becomes standard for most PC game developers. For information, most of today’s games are cross-platform and are still developed using the old DirectX 9.0 c. Yes… the popular X360 and PS3 still use DirectX 9 rendering.

On top of that, these Radeon 4000 and nVIDIA GT200 series are still powerful enough to run all the most popular games out there. It would be better to wait for the second generation of DirectX 11 cards and the price will stabilize. Or you can delay your purchase now and see what the competition (nVIDIA) has to offer later.

But if you have an older card and are already having a hard time running new games, I’d suggest a newer DirectX 11 card as your best option as it’s more future-proof and already includes all the latest technologies that will be used within at least 3 to 4 years. .