Nvidia may switch to DX10.1 and GDDR5 in Q1 2009

Posted by admin

July 5, 2008

10.1 DirectX has been a confusing story for most of us, without any clear indication that the graphics card you should buy in order to gain access to the best feature set. ATI Radeon cards and S3 have been supported DirectX 10.1 for a while now, Nvidia, but silent on his future plans APIs - leaving the gaming market and its customers in uncertainty.

A slide show that we have received, but, unfortunately, can not share with you in order to protect our source, clearly states that Nvidia will offer DirectX 10.1 support with its next generation GPU notebook that are scheduled for Spring 2009 release. DirectX 10.1 is also likely to be offered in the next generation of desktop GPU, which should debut either in late Q4 2008 or Q1 2009, with a possible clue to what long Q1 and Q2 2009.

So what does that mean? Well, it depends on your point of view.

What we know for sure is that with Nvidia’s decision to support DX10.1, the industry will embrace this API.

For very high end, may mean that you should think twice before spending USD500 or more in a card DX10.0. DX10.1 cards may be the best value proposition, if you want to run the latest games and do not want to buy another card of USD500 in six months from now. Nvidia GPU of the new generation, we hear, also will be 1.5 to 2 times faster than current technology.

This decision may also have some implications for the DMA. Realistically, AMD has six months advantage over Nvidia in terms of API support at this time and also appears to have competition rather than hardware as well. If AMD plays the game smart, you should be able to regain market share, as the 4800 series may be the most attractive for computer graphics technology at this time - at least for those of us with a limited budget.

Oh, and we almost forgot: Nvidia also switch to GDDR5 memory, most likely in 2008. As GDDR5 chips are more available, we expect the first GDDR5 Nvidia cards to hit the market in Q4.

Internet