Taiwan-based graphics chip maker S3 Graphics is planning to launch two new graphics chips, Chrome 460 and 430, by the end of 2007. The Chrome 460 will support DirectX 10 and adopts a 90nm process, while the Chrome 430 will support DirectX 10.1 and adopts a 65nm process. Both chips will be manufactured by Fujitsu and have already entered the design verification test stage. Volume production is expected to start before the end of the year. Chrome 460 and 430 will have maximum core frequencies of 1GHz, support PCI Express 1.0 and have built-in HDMI and HDCP compatibility. The two chips will mainly focus on the mid-range (460) and entry-level (430) markets.

IGN has released some videos for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. They are located in the PC section, but are marked with 360. So it makes it hard to say on which version they are showing. In one of the videos it states that the PC and PS3 version will be identical to each other. The game its self looks very promising, and could bring a lot fun to FPS fans when it is released.

You can check out the videos here.Source/Videos: IGN

Up to this point, DirectX10 cards in DirectX10 benchmarks have performed abysmally. Company of Heroes, Lost Planet, and other DX10 games have all performed at a fraction of the speed that their DX9 counterparts boast. However, this all is about to change, thanks to recent benchmarks from a pre-release version of Crysis. Dignews benchmarked modern DX10 computers, including a Toshiba Satellite notebook with an 8700. And while all of the computers had occasional stutters (which could plausibly be fixed by the time the game is released, considering Crysis is not even in beta yet), all of them also rendered the game in a quality that simply stunned reviewers. The Toshiba Satellite somehow managed to run Crysis with almost all settings maxed out. Please click the source link for the full review.

Microsoft has released an updated version of DirectX for June, although it isn't clear whether the update is just for DirectX 9.0c or for DirectX 10 on Vista as well. Regardless of this, it is still recommended that Vista users update their systems because Vista will benefit from any DirectX 9.0c fixes when playing DirectX 9 games. The web installer is only for Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions), whilst the redistributable version will also work with Vista. The download links are listed below:

• Web installer for Windows 2000, XP and 2003: download [44KB - 41.4MB]
• Redistributable installer for Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista: download [53.6MB]

NVIDIA has released an updated version of the WHQL certified ForceWare driver for Windows Vista, taking the version number to 158.24. This driver works with all GeForce series 6, 7 and 8 cards running on Vista, although DirectX 10 support is obviously only available on the series 8 cards. Please note, if you are wanting to use DirectX 10 with SLI you will need to download the 158.43 beta driver, as no WHQL driver supports this feature yet. The 158.24 driver fixes numerous game and application compatibility problems, offers increased performance in 3D applications and adds support for Vertical Sync in DirectX applications. You can download the 32-bit driver here and the 64-bit driver here.

Finally, the first of its kind playable DirectX 10 demo PC title - Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is now available for download as promised. Click here and choose to download either the DX9 demo or the long aticipated DX10 Lost Planet PC demo(Windows Vista only). Please read the Capcom blog if you encounter any problems. I'll also use this news post to add link to Legit Reviews benchmark article: Benchmarking DirectX10 - Lost Planet Extreme Condition, where both NVIDIA's 8800GTX and ATI's latest creation HD 2900XT are being tested head to head in DX10 environment.
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Theo Valich from our lovely rumor mill number one TheInquirer got aware of a soon to be released DirectX 10 Update for Call of Juarez. The exact release date has not been disclosed yet but a special DirectX 10 Benchmark based on the game will be released during the next weeks. It's been some days ago that we already reported about this certain benchmark application based on CoJ, back then it was closely related to AMDs upcoming R600 cards. It's therefore very likely that the patch and benchmark will be made official by May 14th, the launch day of AMDs R600 lineup.

In BioShock you will walk and dive through the remains of a hidden under water city called Rapture. BioShock will be released in late August of this year for the PC and Xbox 360 and the developers now revealed spectacular footage of the water effects in the game. You will find a mid-quality video online as well as a 65MB 1280x720 HD video which does BioShock's great visual effects much more justice.
If you want to dive into the technical and gameplay aspects of the water features you will find a Question and Answer article over at 2K Games which goes into all the details.

Will there be a difference in the water effects if you are using DX9 or DX10?

JJ: Depending on the performance gain on DX10 hardware, there will potentially be some additional details and effects enabled on these cards.

AMD will be launching ten DirectX 10 capable products towards the end of May 2007. They will be "covering the entire stack" - affordable to high-end - with their series. AMD's Chief Sales and Marketing Officer also commented that "we do not do soft launches," so there will be no waiting for retail stores to have the video cards in stock.

AMD's main competitor regarding video cards, NVIDIA, already has had a series of discrete DirectX 10 cards available to consumers. Although NVIDIA's line does span from entry-level to high-end, they do not have ten DirectX 10 products.

According to DailyTech: there will four entry-level/home-theater and three affordable mid-range cards. Which leaves three possible products, out of the ten, for the high-end niche.

Source: AMD Earnings Transcript via X-bit labs

We all know that DirectX10, for many of us, means an expensive upgrade and the move to a new operating system. We also know that DirectX10 is going to be necessary to play DX10 games such as Crysis and Halo 2 for the PC. What if I told you that a project sought to change that? That you could run DirectX10-exclusive games such as Halo 2 for PC on a DirectX9 platform with Windows 2000? Thanks to the Alky Project, we may not have to spend a penny to enjoy DirectX10 goodness. A quote from their official blog (I know, it's not an official web-page, but they do link to working models) tells us exactly how we can make DirectX10 work without spending at least $270 on a DirectX10 upgrade ($170 NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT, $100 Windows Vista Home Basic).

I'm proud to release a preview of our DirectX 10 compatibility libraries. These libraries allow the use of DirectX 10 games on platforms other than Microsoft Vista, and increase hardware compatibility even on Vista, by compiling Geometry Shaders down to native machine code for execution where hardware isn't capable of running it. No longer will you have to upgrade your OS and video card(s) to play the latest games.

The preview/beta build is here. Make sure to read the README file, as it will tell you exactly how to install the project.

THQ has announced that the sequel to last year's Company of Heroes will be DirectX 10 ready. The proprietary Essence Engine of the original Company of Heroes series, developed in-house by Relic, will be upgraded in COH2 to support a dynamic weather system and more realistic physics, as well as the graphical joys of Shader Model 4.0. Since the game will be DirectX 10 ready, it will be playable only with Windows Vista OS. The game will be out in Q3 2007, until then enjoy the newly released Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts expansion pack.

At CeBIT, GECUBE demonstrated what it claims to be the fastest AGP board to date, the GC-HX195XTGA3-D3.

This board is based on a fully-fledged R580+ GPU, marketed as the Radeon X1950XT. However, the GPU clock has been changed from the default 625MHz to 648MHz. ATI Overdrive is supported, and this option in the Catalyst driver will increase clock all the way to 675MHz. The card uses 256MB of GDDR3 memory. Product manager Jeff Fu said the firm "will not abandon AGP users".

GECUBE also proudly announced what will make many AGP users very happy: AGP DX10.

With NVIDIA now supporting DirectX 10 graphics and ATI well on the way to joining it, Intel is looking like the most likely competitor be next in line to enter the new era of PC gaming. With its new notebook platform codenamed "Santa Rosa," Intel's next generation GM965 mobile chipsets, known as Crestline, will feature integrated graphics capable of running DirectX 10 applications (probably not as well as anything from NVIDIA or ATI though). This should give a boost to the number of people DirectX 10 ready by making it more mainstream in the notebook industry, meaning DirectX 10 games could become common sooner than expected.

Ruby is ATI/AMDs mascot when it comes to graphic cards. The vitual model has been refreshed for DirectX 10 and the R600. She seems to favor lipp gloss when run on the new generation of hardware.

Company of Heroes, one of the best RTS games of 2006, may be the first game to be patched to use DirectX10. The patch, which can be expected sometime in March, will redo a lot of the textures. It will also add several new features, streamline the graphics engine, and generally make things look prettier. The DX10 version of Company of Heroes will actually run faster than the DX9 version, however once you add in all the additional gameplay features THQ plans on adding, the two versions of Company of Heroes will perform about the same.

MSI has quietly shown some 17 inch notebooks at CES which use the next generation portable graphics chips. The MSI ER710 MS-171B and GX710 use the new ATI X2600 portable GPU and a Turion X2 CPU. There was another one with the named GX700 MS-1719 with Nvidia NB8P graphics and Intel Crestline Chipset. No further details are available besides the models numbers. All of these are expected to be DirectX 10 capable, as ATI uses the X2K naming for the new line and NVIDIA uses the 8 from the G80.

NVIDIA is demonstrating spectacular next-generation DirectX 10 gaming content running on NVIDIA GeForce 8800 graphics processors at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. NVIDIA GeForce 8800 graphics processing units (GPUs) and NVIDIA nForce 680-series media and communications processors (MCPs) will demonstrate dozens of cutting edge PC games at the show including Microsoft's Games for Windows space in the Central Hall, Booth #7144, at CES.

While NVIDIA has had some trouble getting into the entry-level GPU market in the past, the company should have some better luck this time. The G84 series will be the first entry level DX10 GPU, set to replace the 7300 series as a graphics card for people who do not want to spend a fortune on graphics. It has an unknown level of pipelines, but it will be a stripped down version of the G80. The G84 will support Shader Model 4, have unified shaders and be fully compatible with SLI. The G84 should be announced at CeBIT in March.

In fact, a lot of DX10 games are delayed. Crysis and Flight Simulator X have both pushed off their release dates to at least late Q1 07, if not Q2 or Q3. The main reason behind this is the lack of DX10 hardware support for these games, and we will be lucky if there is a DX10 beta of Flight Simulator X on the launch day of Windows Vista.

Quarter 3 of 2007 will be very interesting for the hardware industry, as Intel plans to roll out the first motherboard with DX10 compatible integrated graphics. The G35 will support Intel Clear Video Micro-architecture, DDR2 and DDR3 memory simultaneously, and possibly an FSB of 1333 MHz. It can and will be matched with ICH9, ICH9R, ICH9DH Southbridges

Enermax is proud to announce INFINITI as its latest high-end PSU series. New graphic cards such as ATI R600 or NVIDIA 8800 series will consume more and more power, so ENERMAX created its new INFINITI line of mainstream market power supplies, ideal for systems with 1 to 3 video cards and one multi-core processor. INFINITI will be the succesor of the LIBERTY, NOISETAKER II and FMA II desktop series PSUs. Ranging from 650W to 750W, it comes with three separated 12V rails, each capable of providing up to 28 resp. 30A. All INFINITI units will be modular and cooled by a special 13.5cm fan for silent operation. INFINITI will start shipping in the beginning of December to ENERMAX global subsidiaries and, depending on area, it should be available in the sales channels from January onwards. Prices might vary locally.