Introduction

Face it, everything changes, whether on a daily, monthly or annual basis, things change. Many of us are not accustomed to change and don’t take it very well, while others accept change as a possibility of having improvements. For those of us who enjoy computers, a change will be coming soon and that change will be in the form of a new Windows Operating System. With the launch of Windows 7 comes a change from DirectX 10 to Directx11, DirectX is the part of Windows that controls many of the ways we view graphics that are generated via a video card to our screens.

What DirectX 11 brings to the table is the better ability to utilize the compute power of a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). Unlike a CPU, a GPU can process in parallel, so it takes less time to render, transcode and compute equations than a CPU. This, in turn, will give the end user a better overall computing experience.
Direct Compute, which is part of DirectX 11, is strictly for GPU acceleration. Through the Khronos Group, the major video card manufacturers have submitted OpenCL Software Development Kits to assist developers in creating software (video games and video enhancement applications) that will take advantage of Direct Compute's power to accelerate visual (physics for gaming) and HD conversion (transcoding or upconverting video) via the parallel compute of the GPU.

ATI is the first video card manufacturer to produce a DirectX 11 capable GPU and have named these the 5000 Series. At this time, there are four discreet Direct X video cards available, the 5750 and 5770, which are mainstream, and the 5850 and 5870, which are gamer (enthusiast) cards. Sapphire Technologies, a manufacturer of ATI Radeon Graphics video cards, has released their first round of 5000 series video cards and they are available to the public.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 5870, HD 5850 and HD 5770 are all DirectX 11 capable and will be the three cards I will be evaluating. The Sapphire HD 5850 and 5870, which are high end mainstream and enthusiast level cards, and the HD 5770, which is a mainstream card, all offer the ability to empower your visual computing experience via DirectCompute.