From/De: AMD

SUNNYVALE, Calif. –(Business Wire)– Nov 18, 2009 AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the flagship installment in the award-winning line of graphics cards, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970, the fastest card ever created.¹ The new ultra high-end model joins a growing list of the world’s first and only graphics cards to fully support Microsoft DirectX^® 11 technology and ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology.

Designed to support the most demanding PC games at ultra-high resolutions and image quality settings, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 has unlocked overclocking potential, granting access to every bit of power the card has to offer through ATI Overdrive™ technology.² Now shipping from retailers and available in the channel, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 also launches today in new Alienware Area-51, Area-51 ALX and Aurora desktop PCs.

Record-breaking overclocking capabilities take Dragon Platform technology to the forefront for users that demand the utmost control in performance tuning. The unrivaled overclocking capabilities of the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 are enabled by the unique design of the card, which features advanced fan and vapor chamber technologies and a fully vented exhaust to keep the card cool and ensure overclocking headroom using ATI Overdrive™ technology.² The formidable combination of AMD Phenom II processors, AMD 7-Series chipsets, and ATI Radeon HD graphics deliver comprehensive tuning, immersive entertainment, and outstanding value.

Enthusiasts can expand their field of view, ATI Radeon™ HD 5970, driving up to three displays at once, delivering an unmatched maximum resolution of 7680×1600 and creating an unparalleled game play experience.³ For the first time ever, ATI CrossFireX™ technology leverages the power of multiple graphics processors to deliver even more game performance in 20 of today’s popular titles when using ATI Eyefinity technology, with more to come.

The ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 graphics card delivers nearly 5 TeraFLOPS of compute power, ensuring superior performance in the latest DirectX^® 11 games, as well as in previous versions of DirectX^® and OpenGL titles. With the world’s most powerful graphics core built on 40nm process technology harnessing up to 3,200 stream processors, gamers can enjoy DirectX^® 11 games now, such as EA Phenomic’s BattleForge™ and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:Call of Pripyat from GSC Game World, with many more titles on the way, including:

• Battlefield Bad Company 2 from EA DICE
• DiRT™ 2 from Codemasters, arriving December 1, 2009,
• Aliens vs. Predator™ from Rebellion,
• Update to The Lord of the Rings Online™ from Turbine,
• Update to Dungeons and Dragons Online® Eberron Unlimited™ from Turbine.

New features and functionality of ATI Stream technology allow users to harness the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 graphics card to enhance their computing experience, helping to improve the performance of enabled media, entertainment and productivity applications.⁴ ATI Stream technology and the HD 5970 support both Direct Compute 11 and OpenCL industry standards for application acceleration.

Delivering full-fledged performance when needed, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 also leads in power efficiency by automatically powering down unused GPU resources when not in use, resulting in idle desktop power consumption as low as 42 watts.⁵

The ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 is supported by a wide range of add-in-board companies, including ASK, Asus, Club 3D, Diamond, Gigabyte, High Tech, MSI, Sapphire, Tul/Power Color, Visiontek and XFX.

To celebrate the launch of the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 and to conclude a series of contests created to celebrate AMD’s 40^th anniversary year, AMD is announcing the third and final contest designed to give back to AMD fans and supporters. Starting today, fans of AMD on Facebook will be able to enter to win one of 10 Microsoft Xbox 360s or one of 10 Wiis from Nintendo. One gaming system will be given away every weekday for four weeks. Full contest rules and details available online: www.amd.com/40years

“With the arrival of the ATI Radeon HD 5970, the fastest graphics card in the world, we’ve cemented AMD as the unquestioned graphics leader,” said Matt Skynner, vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics Group. “With the holiday shopping season right around the corner, the new card, coupled with the awesome power of ATI Eyefinity technology, is the ultimate setup for serious gamers.”

“The extraordinary performance of the ATI Radeon HD 5970 is a perfect match for the Alienware Area-51, Area-51 ALX and Aurora desktops,” said Frank Azor, senior product planning manager, Dell Gaming. “By offering this level of graphics capability as well as the visual and performance enhancements made possible by DirectX 11 hardware, gamers will benefit from enhanced image quality enabling an incredibly intense gaming experience.”

Supporting Resources

• Pictures: See photos of the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 series graphics cards on Flickr

• Press kit: More information on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 series of graphics cards
• Product page: ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 series product information
• Contest: Enter the third and final contest in AMD’s 40^th anniversary celebration for a chance to win one of 20 Wiis from Nintendo or Microsoft Xbox 360s. More information available online: www.amd.com/40years, or enter to win on Facebook.
• Twitter: Follow AMD graphics news on Twitter at @ATIGraphics
• Facebook: Become a fan of AMD technology on Facebook

About AMD

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company dedicated to collaborating with customers and technology partners to ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home and play. For more information, visit http://www.amd.com.

1. As of November 18, 2009, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5790 scores X12011.1 in 3DMark Vantage Extreme preset, which is the highest recorded single-card score. System configuration: Intel Core i7 965 processor @ 3.33GHz, Gigabyte EX58-UD5 motherboard, Corsair XMS 6GB memory (3×2GB) at 1600MHz (8-8-8-24 timings), Windows 7 RTM x64, ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 1GB GDDR5, Drivers: ATI Catalyst™ 9.10 Beta (8.663.1) / NVIDIA ForceWare 191.07WHQL

2. AMD product warranty does not cover damage caused by overclocking, even when enabled by AMD software. Unlike previous generations of ATI Radeon™ graphics cards, the overclocking potential of the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 graphics card has been left uncapped. You control the amount of overclocking to which you subject your card. Please use discretion and caution when overclocking.

3. To enable a third display on an ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card you require one panel with a DisplayPort connector.

4. Requires application support for ATI Stream technology.

5. Average idle power of the ATI Radeon HD 5970, as measured by AMD on a typical board in a typical use-case

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, ATI, the ATI logo, Radeon, Overdrive and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

The DirectX SDK comes with quite a few nice samples, neatly organized in a sample browser. Quoting the documentation from the OptimizedMesh sample:

This OptimizedMesh Sample sample demonstrates the different types of meshes D3DX can load and optimize, as well as the different types of underlying primitives it can render. An optimized mesh has its vertices and faces reordered so that rendering performance can be improved.

Sadly, it turns out the code as is cannot load meshes with more than 64K vertices (much less optimize them). Now I’m sure somewhere in the SDK a disclaimer is buried, saying there’s no warranty, this isn’t production code, the usual yadda yadda. Still , seemed to me like optimizing meshes is a topic that is of interest mostly to an audience dealing with large meshes (certainly I was), so this really deserves a fix.

The sample browser comes with neat ‘feedback’ links, and I did communicate this to MS a while ago. They never did get back to me, so I thought someone out there might benefit from the fix online.

In the main source file, OptimizedMesh.cpp, make the following addition:

...
// Load the mesh from the specified file
hr = D3DXLoadMeshFromX( strMesh, D3DXMESH_SYSTEMMEM, pd3dDevice,
      ppAdjacencyBuffer, &pD3DXMtrlBuffer, NULL,
      &g_dwNumMaterials, &pMeshSysMem );

if( FAILED( hr ) )
   goto End;

if(pMeshSysMem->GetOptions() && D3DXMESH_32BIT)
   g_dwMemoryOptions |= D3DXMESH_32BIT;

// Get the array of materials out of the returned buffer, and allocate a texture array
d3dxMaterials = (D3DXMATERIAL*) pD3DXMtrlBuffer->GetBufferPointer();
...

In a nutshell, the culprit is a tragic legacy of DirectX mesh files: by default, meshes allocate only 16 bit for a vertex index in the stored index buffer. Thus, meshes with more than 2^16 vertices require some explicit treatment – as listed here.

Directx uses the left-handed coordinate system when +x goes left, +y goes up, and +z goes into the screen.

Painkiller oyunun en son capcanlı modeli Resurrection da çıktı. Malum dönem oyun bakımından bereketli dönem. Onun da sistem gereksinimlerini yaziyim:

- İşlemci(CPU): 2.4GHZ+ (çekirdek başına)

- RAM: 2GB ve üstü

- VGA: Radeon 3800 / Geforce 7800 ve üstü

- DirectX® 9.0c (included)

- OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7

- HDD: 6GB

二日ほど前から、Windows Server 2008 及び Windows Vista 向けの新しいパッチ「Windows Vista 用のプラットフォーム更新プログラム(KB971644)」が Windows Update にて公開されています。

肝心な中身の内容ですが、まず DirectX のバージョンが10.1から11へとバージョンアップされています。もともと DirectX 11 は Windows 7 のみに提供とされていた物なので、新しく Vista でも利用出来るようになりました。また WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) も1.0から1.1へと更新されます。GUIに対するCPUへの負荷やメモリの消費量が減ります。こちらも Windows 7 にはすでに適用されているものです。

試しに手持ちの Windows Vista が入ったPCにこの更新プログラムを適用したところ、更新前のベンチを記録していなかったので数値上ではわかりませんが、体感出来るくらいの負荷低下は感じられました（プラシーボ効果かもしれないけど・・・）。かなりの低スペックマシンでの事なので、日常の作業でもさくさく動くようなハイスペックな環境ではあまり変わらないかもしれません。ただ、DirectX 11 に対応したベンチマークプログラムやゲームなどを使う人には、是非適用をお勧めしたい更新プログラムだと思います。

尚、すでに Service Pack 2 が適用されていないと更新出来ないのでご注意下さい。また Windows Update 上での分類が”重要な更新”であるのにもかかわらず、デフォルトでインストールにチェックがされていないので、自分でリストから探してインストールする必要があります。

関連URL

• 窓の杜 – 【NEWS】MS、Windows Vistaのグラフィック機能をWindows 7相当へ強化するパッチを配布開始
• Announcing Final Releases of Platform Update for Windows Vista Technologies – Windows 7 Team Blog – The Windows Blog
• Windows Server 2008 プラットフォーム更新プログラムと Windows Vista プラットフォーム更新プログラムの説明

Hey, Deepest Sender, what gives? You’ve deleted three of my posts already when all I wanted to do was change the category they were in.

So now I have to re-post the stuff it deleted. Here we go:

Selected posts from The Straight Dope, compiled into 1 image.

I will admit that I have only the foggiest idea of what DirectX does. I know you use it in games, and I know that the higher the version number, the better the results. But in my games I never really could tell the difference, mostly because I don’t play graphics-intensive games. (I tried turning on DX10 graphics in DDO, but couldn’t tell there was a difference). Still, the video is pretty nifty.

O novo sistema da Microsoft, o Windows 7, que teve lançamento mundial nesta quinta-feira (22), foi aprimorado para fazer melhor uso de memória dos computadores, permitindo que máquinas mais modestas possam rodar diversos aplicativos. Os games também terão melhorias com o novo Windows, que faz uso de novas tecnologias para apresentar gráficos mais realistas.

No Brasil, o Windows 7 chega a 4 mil lojas, incluindo grandes pontos de venda e lojas especializadas. O valor começa em R$ 330 (versão Basic) e chega a R$ 670 (Ultimate). A empresa cobrará ainda R$ 400 pela versão Premium e R$ 630 pela Professional.

Uma das principais novidades para os games no Windows 7 está no DirectX 11. Este recurso permite que as produtoras de games criem títulos com gráficos ainda melhores, utilizando o novo gerenciamento de memória do sistema operacional. A comunicação entre placas de vídeo e o computador também foi aprimorado, permitindo que os games rodem com melhor desempenho.

Entretanto, para que os jogos façam uso da nova tecnologia, as próprias produtoras precisam desenvolver jogos voltados para o Directx 11. Um dos primeiros títulos anunciados que usará o recurso é “Alien vs. predator”, que além dos PCs, será lançado para Xbox 360 e PlayStation 3. De acordo com Chris Kingsley,presidente de tecnologia da Rebellion que produz o game, “a ferramenta leva os games de computador a um novo patamar dos gráficos 3D”. Os jogos poderão trazer visual mais orgânico e menos artificial.

Para usufruir de todos os recursos, é necessário que o usuário tenha uma máquina apta a rodar games. É preciso ter uma boa placa de vídeo, um processador rápido e memória RAM compatível com as especificações descritas pelo fabricante do game. Todos os jogos existentes no mercado são compatíveis com o Windows 7, mas isso não significa que eles usam os novos recursos do sistema.

Jogos sem joystick

Em julho, Bill Gates disse que o Windows 7 pode usar o projeto Natal. O sistema composto por sensores e câmeras substitui o controle pelo corpo do jogador. O acessório será lançado para o Xbox 360 em 2010, mas, de acordo com Gates, ele poderá ser compatível com os games de PC.

Para o fundador da Microsoft, além dos games, os usuários poderão usar outros recursos do computador usando o Natal, interagindo com outras pessoas pela internet e utilizando aplicativos.

Fonte: G1

   Ceva din splendoarea noului DirectX 11 pusă în evidenţă de motorul grafic Unigine .

Nice details here.  I’m not convinced its worth it however.  Most people will have the same older video card so the benefits seem limited.

En este video se podrá apreciar lo que vendrá en tecnologías DirectX en su versión 11. El realismo del uso de texturas, un motor gráfico utilizando Shader Model 5.0 en modalidad multi-tarea a diferencia de la version 9.

El juego DiRT 2 será uno de los primeros títulos que tendrá esta nueva propuesta gráfica, estará disponible para el 1 de Diciembre en Estados Unidos.

DiRT 2 DirectX 11 tech demonstration

Pois é galera febril…
Com as placas que suportam DirectX 11 brotando pelos cantos, seria legal ter uma demonstração prática e em movimento do mesmo.
Então… Não é que a ATI e a Codemasters atenderam ao pedido?!
Finalmente liberaram um videozinho maroto demonstrando alguma das firulas gráficas que estarão disponíveis no novo DiRT 2.

Então, vamos ao que interessa nesse video, mas antes, quero adicionar um pequeno “porém”. DiRT 2 não utiliza todas as funções do DX11. A própria Codemasters confirmou que a maioria das funções disponiveis no DiRT2 são as mais faceis de serem notadas, mas parte das novas funções foram deixadas de lado. Creio eu que para “amadurecerem” um pouco mais e serem utilizadas futuramente no GRID 2 que está previsto para o ano que vem.

O foco deste video é a utilização do “Hardware Tessellator” que proporciona uma ampla lista de possibilidades de aplicação, como vocês podem ver nas fotos abaixo.

Simulação de física em tecidos (bandeiras) dando mais detalhes as bandeiras.

Simulação da platéia com mais detalhes.

Contagem de polígonos mais elevada proporcionando mais detalhamento.

Simulação de física de fluidos - detalhe para as ondas no canto direito da imagem.

Tessellator também é utilizado para simular a água.

Efeitos de luz e "post-processing" também recebem um "boost" através do tessellator.

Detalhes para os reflexos no carro e para o efeito de "Depth-of-field" mais ao fundo.

Pois é… Video curto, mas revelador na minha opinião.
A unica coisa que me deixa realmente triste é ver a lista de jogos que vão sair utilizando DX11 e o fato de eu ainda não ter uma HD5870 ainda.
Pra que não sabe quais jogos já estão quase prontos para serem lançados e vão utilizar DX11, aqui vai alguns:

Alien vs Predator – Primeiro trimestre 2010.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - Primeiro trimestre 2010.
BattleForge – Sem previsão.
Crysis 2 – Sem previsão.
Dirt 2 -Dezembro 2009.
F1 2010 – Sem previsão… talvez porque a temporada de 2010 ainda não chegou?!
Race Driver: Grid 2 – Ultimo trimestre de 2010.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat – Já a venda.

Pois é galerinha dobalacobaco, agora o jeito é juntar dinheiras dinheiro para uma HD58xx e DiRT2 ou qualquer um desses jogos acima.
Deixo com vocês o “teaser” do DiRT2 e mais algumas imagens.

Abraços a todos e não esqueçam de comentar/assinar meu feed RSS.

Yesterday, We made our first rehearsal for the Xna workshop we’re preparing to present in COMPASS’10 … hmm .. I think things went well..

I can’t really remember how it started with Xna and who exactly told me about it .. nah .. this is out of my memory range! .. though I think it was around the end of the second semester in third year .. yeah probably that’s when I started to read about it ..

One of the main reasons I got into FCIS was game development .. this one question:” How do they make these games?”  kept flowing all the way .. this is also why I’ve chosen SC

I don’t mind working with OpenGl or DirectX at all .. even though OpenGl was disastrous last year! .. It’s just that I nearly taught myself everything about Xna and that was completely new to me .. I’ve been interested in enhancing my technical skills!!

Anyway .. We still have too much work to do preparing the workshop .. I hope things go right!

For these of your who have heard the name DirectX, but don’t really now what it is, I can say it a framework you use to communicate with your graphic’s hardware. DirectX is developed by Microsoft in the 90’s and it has evolved ever since, and very dramatically ever since. DirectX has a counter part called OpenGL developed by Silicon Graphics Inc (SGI) in the 90’s to, but OpenGL is another talk.

Back in the days, games look a lot like the same because, the effects used such as lights, textures and so, was static. DirectX supported method for all effect, and they had a certain number for each. But then the so-called shaders appeared, making it possible, to make you own equations for effects. Game programmers could now use full potential of the graphic’s hardware, in their own ways. The best know shaders are the vertex shader, where you can operate on each vertexes in a 3D mesh, and the pixel shader where you could operate on each pixel on the screen.

Around 2002 DirectX had evolved to version 9, or better known as DirectX 9c.

The Best DirectX

The reason I think of DirectX 9c as the best DirectX yet, is that, it is still the most used here in 2009. We have a DirectX 10 and DirectX 10.1 now, but Windows XP, Windows Vista and the coming Window 7 are all build on DirectX 9c. XNA and Xbox uses Direct 9C. And the most interesting part is that DirectX 10 and DirectX 10.1 both includes Direct 9c headers, which means they are built on DirectX 9c to. What is it there is so great about DirectX 9C? My guess is, that it is so wide spread and it don’t requires special strong graphics hardware. It has simple shaders(Vertex and pixel shader), and yet you can use them for making nice graphics. The 2 downside which pops into my mind, is that the static number of vertex and pixel shaders, and all this hardware support it has, there is need for a lot of checking in run-time.

The sad DirectX

That would be DirectX 10 and DirectX 10.1, I do see both as Direct 10. When developing Windows Vista, Microsoft also developed DirectX 10. It was brand new in 2005, with a lot of features to make games even better. If you wanted a graphic’s card to be able to talk with DirectX 10, it must be validated and certified that all of DirectX 10’s functions was supported. No more wasted time, on checking. The issue with static number of vertex and pixel shaders was fixed by introducing unified shaders, which could be either a vertex shader or a pixel shader. The Geometry shader was also introduced, making it possible to process whole triangles as once. With so many good features, why is this DirectX so sad?

As we all know, Windows Vista’s success never came. Vista was considered to slow and using to many resources, so most gamers refused to upgrade from Windows XP, and windows XP don’t support DirectX 10. Game developers living from making games to gamers, had no motivation for using DirectX 10 now. I know from personal experience, shifting you code from using DirectX 9c to using  DirectX 10, costs a lot pain, because the interface is different. So I guess game develops did see an opportunity to save a lot of money, not to go from DirectX 9c to DirectX 10.

Maybe the greatest DirectX

DirectX 11 is on its way, and will it be able to knock DirectX 9c of its throne? properly, I would say. DirectX is not depended of Windows 7 in my eyes, because windows 7 is built on DirectX 9c. DirectX 11 is guaranteed to run on Windows Vista and Windows 7, and it is packed with all of DirectX 10’s features plus some new hardcore one. I see Direct 11 as revolution, where I did see DirectX 10 as an extension of DirectX 9c. Beyond the DirectX10 features it is action packed with Hull shader, tesselator, domain shader and computer shader, and I don’t even know what some of it means, I have to admit:-), so I have to read up on that. I know that DirectX 11 will be able to render more realistic 3D images, giving more realistic and beautiful graphic in the games of the future, because of this new features.

Why all this?

For fun I’m developing a XNA 3D engine, which I also ports to DirectX for keeping my skills up. XNA is built on Direct 9c, and I don’t think it is never ever going to use Direct 10. I the beginning I was thinking of making my DirectX 3D engine being able to use both DirectX 9c and DirectX 10. Mostly because I wanted to practice using the DirectX 10 shaders. I conclude it would be a waste of time, it is too much pain to make the engine use both versions, they are to different, and one of them are dying. So in preparation for DirectX 11, I have decided to build a shader sandbox, as is called, to practice on geometry and unified shaders, which i also included in Direct 11.

Cheers.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with the most epic of tutorials: Using PIX With XNA.  This 37-page monster teaches PIX for the XNA programmer, and includes an in-depth explanation of the XNA/D3D9 relationship as well as 6 excercises that show you the how to solve common problems (full source code and XNA 3.1 projects included).  I sure hope somebody finds this thing useful…it took me forever to write this thing.

I originally intended to have this tutorial hosted on Ziggyware…in fact I finished this over a month ago and submitted it to Ziggy.  However as you may or may not know, Ziggy has become the unfortunate target of scumbag hackers who have repeatedly hijacked his site in order to deploy malware.  The whole thing absolutely sucks…I really wish that those assholes had decided to hijack a site that wasn’t the most comprehensive collection of community-created XNA resources.  I hope Ziggy figures out a way to shake them and get the site up and running again…but it looks doubtful.  Honestly I don’t think I’d want to keep dealing with the kinds of problems he’s gone though.

Κάρτα φάντασμα εμφανίζεται σε beta driver! – ( HWBOX ) O/C on first boot

Μια σειρά εκπλήξεων μας έχει ετοιμάσει η AMD/ATi για το τέλος του 2009. Μετά την περσινή επιτυχία της σειράς 4800, τις πολύ καλές (μέχρι τώρα) πωλήσεις της σειράς 5800 και δίχως αντίπαλο στην αγορά τόσο σε επιδόσεις, όσο και σε υποστήριξη για DirectX 11 γραφικά, είναι έτοιμη για ακόμα περισσότερες συγκινήσεις. Συγκεκριμένα, μόλις χθες μάθαμε για μια νέα σειρά drivers για το OpenCl σε μορφή beta που ανακοινώνουν την ύπαρξη και άλλης κάρτας της σειράς EverGreen για την οποία δεν είχαμε ακούσει καθόλου πρόσφατα.[next]