Intel has announced the availability of a new Windows Vista driver for its chipsets with integrated drivers. According to the company, the new driver is WHQL-certified and unleashes the power of Microsoft's DirectX 10 for both multimedia and gaming applications.

The DirectX technology is a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) that takes care of all the multimedia processing. The technology can be used in Windows-based environments only and is mainly used for video games.

Intel planned to introduce DirectX 10 support across its product line for a long time now, and the first references to Microsoft's technology date back in 2006, when the chip manufacturer introduced the GM965 chipset. The new Windows Vista driver is built to offer DirectX 10 capabilities for the platforms built around Intel's GM965 and G35 Express chipsets.

"We have been able to add features to products using these chipsets via driver updates. DX10 is the latest capability we have been able to add", said an Intel spokesperson. The driver also meets all the requirements for the upcoming changes in Microsoft's Vista Premium certification requirements.

At the moment, Asustek is shipping a motherboard offering touted by the manufacturer as being the world's first Intel platform with an onboard integrated VGA solution featuring out-of-the-box support for Microsoft's DirectX 10 technology.

Moreover, Intel has already gone public with another G35-based product, called the DG35EC Classic. The new board is built around Intel's GMA X3500 integrated graphics core offering both support for high-definition video (1080p) and Microsoft DirectX10 capabilities with OpenGL 2.0 support.

Despite the fact that Intel's integrated graphics cores now come with full support for DirectX 10, they are still far from delivering the same performance as compared to a fully-fledged discrete graphics card from Nvidia or AMD.

The new driver is designed for the GM965 and G35 Express chipsets and can be downloaded from Softpedia using this link.