14 DAY TRIAL // DirectX 11 graphics cards are not as scarce as they were a few months ago, even though NVIDIA has yet to launch its own models. Still, the new graphics features provided by the next-generation DirectX have already been adopted by a number of games, such as Dirt 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Alien vs. Predator. Trying to encourage a more rapid adoption of the next-generation graphics technology, XFX is now selling a number of HD 5xxx Series graphics cards in a bundle with Alien vs. Predator.
The three cards that XFX is pairing with the recent game from Rebellion are the XFX Radeon HD 5770, the XFX Radeon HD 5850 and the XFX Radeon HD 5870. All these cards have 1GB GDDR5 memory and support the ATI Stream and ATI Eyefinity technologies, as well as CrossFireX and the ATI Avivo HD and ATI Power Play technologies. The company will be offering the game in the form of a voucher that allows the game to be downloaded via Steam.
The XFX Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5850 are built on the 40nm process technology and support OpenGL 3.2. The HD 5770 only supports OpenGL 3.1 but has the same video output capabilities as the other two, namely an HDMI output, a DisplayPort and two DL-DVI ports. All cards naturally work under Windows 7 and will bring DirectX 11-capable games the benefits of Tessellation, Multi-Threading and DirectCompute. Tessellation will enable more graphically detailed images and lifelike characters, whereas Multi-Threading will take advantage of multi-core CPUs. Finally, DirectCompute will accelerate both gaming and non-gaming applications.
The bundle is currently available in Denmark, Sweden and Norway but should become available in other European markets very soon. More information on the offer and the individual specifications of each high-end graphics card may be found on XFX's official website.