Windows 7 is coming officially on October 22, 2009 - it was only a matter of time before a new videocard will be released that can support Directx11. Welcome the new ATI 5800 series, or specifically the 5870 and the 5850 videocards. Both are paired with at least 1gb of GDDR5 memory, but I am sure the card manufactuerers will raise RAM as they always do.
It looks interesting for many reasons that are obvious, there's a HDMI port which is probably paird with ATI's on board sound. The icing on top? When the card is idle, it only uses 27 watts of power. The picture clearly shows that the card will be physically big, taking 2 card slots, but it must run cool, the GPU will be done on ATI's second generation 40nm fabrication process. ATI claims to have yields that are very high, so costs will probably drop quickly.
Interesting to note, there are 4 ports on the card, 2 DVIs, 1 HDMI and a DisplayPort. DailyTech posted thier preview here, there are more details of the card I have not covered, so feel free to head on over there and read the article.
My favorite part is actually the end note:
ATI has plans to ship more DirectX 11 parts in the near future. Hemlock combines two Cypress cores together into a Radeon HD 5870 X2 configuration, while Juniper will be the 5800 series equivalent of the Radeon 4830 selling at the $199 price point.
DirectX 11 hits the mainstream early next year with two mainstream products. It is likely to be known as the Radeon 5600 series comprised of the Radeon HD 5670 and Radeon HD 5650. Ultimately, the technology seen in the Radeon 5800 will move into mobile computers and integrated chipsets over the next year
seems great