NVIDIA Says AMD's DirectX 11 Cards Are Only a Short-Term Advantage

During the past months, most news articles that revolved around graphics products usually made at least a passing note that ATI (a business unit of AMD) was the only developer offering DirectX 11-capable graphics processing units. Still, even though it hasn't managed to introduce its own Fermi products, NVIDIA reportedly doesn't see AMD's 60-day head start as something noteworthy in the grand scheme of things.

"To us, being out of sync with the API for a couple of months isn't as important as what we're trying to do in the big scheme of things for the next four or five years. We're just around the corner from preparing our next GeForce and the experience of what you'll see in 3D, what you'll feel in physics, and the improvements you get in graphics will be obvious to the market," said Michael Hara, senior vice president of investor relations and communications of NVIDIA.

According to NVIDIA, the short-term advantage that AMD has been enjoying so far will be overshadowed by the transition from purely graphics-oriented GPUs to units capable of parallel computing tasks. Granted, the advanced visual features of DirectX are not overlooked by the GPU maker, but the company is fully confident that Fermi will reclaim the market.

"This 60-day lag between these events of when our competition has DX11 and when we're coming to market will absolutely seem insignificant in the big picture," Hara stated. "We're almost there. In Q1, the world will get to see what we've done with Fermi."

Among the advanced capabilities offered by DirectX 11 (which was released along with Windows 7) are support for multi-core processors and DirectCompute that enable developers to fully utilize the parallel processing capabilities for graphics processors for operations such as video editing. DirectX 11 also supports tessallation allowing for the rendering of smoother curved surfaces.

"We go through revolutionary changes every three of four years, and that's exactly where we're at today. The next big evolution in the API world has come with DirectX 11 (DX11), but we believe that's a part of the experience," Hara added.