Introduction

One of my favorite TV commercials happens to be one by Microsoft, where a little girl is using a computer to place captions on pictures to send to her friends. Brilliant! Microsoft is using that commercial to advertise their upcoming launch of the Windows 7 Operating System. This is a commercial that, no matter how many times you see it, you can’t help but watch. One of the enhancements Microsoft has upgraded in Windows 7 is Direct X. Direct X 11 has been redesigned to take better advantage of your video card's power via Direct Compute and its ability to take advantage of the GPU’s parallel processing power.

On September 23, 2009 AMD/ATI launched the 5800 series of video cards, which happen to be the first Direct X 11compatible video cards available to consumers. The first of the series to be released were the 5870 and 5850, which were marketed as their (5870) flagship and are enthusiast level video cards, starting at prices just below $300.00 USD (5850). For those of us who are on a budget and are anticipating the launch of Windows 7, those two video cards may be out of the question and we are left wondering when a mainstream Direct X 11 compatible video card video card will be available. Well, the wait is over. AMD/ATI has launched their newest video card in the 5000 series, the Radeon HD 5770 and 5750, which are being marketed towards the mainstream users. Prices start at $109.00 USD for the 5750 and top out at $159.00 USD for the 5770.

Sapphire Technologies, a manufacturer of Radeon series video cards, has announced the availability of their Radeon HD 5770. The Sapphire HD 5770 is targeted towards the mainstream user and is also DirectX 11 compatible. The Sapphire HD 5770 has 800 streaming processors, 1GB of GDDR5 memory, compute power of 1.36 Teraflops and ATI Eyefinity support, at a price that is easy on the wallet.