In about two weeks, Microsoft is going to officially announce the DirectX 11 specifications. The new API is supposed to be the default one in the upcoming Windows 7 (codename Vienna), but Fudzilla informs that DX 11 will also be available for Vista, since Vienna is based on the Vista kernel. This means that DX 11 can be released by the end of 2009. However, I reckon that we won’t see playable games using the new API sooner than summer 2010.

DX11 will bring quite a few improvements to the DX10 architecture, including support for Tessellation (which is already supported at a hardware level by ATI’s cards), compute Shaders - to further help the CUDA and GPGPU projects, CPU multithread support and some new texture compression. It will also bring the improved Shader model 5.0. Unfortunately, we won’t see any ray tracing support for the next several years.

Tessellation will be the next best thing and ATI foresaw this about two years ago. The tessellation algorithm can subdivide objects and give them better level of details and more polygons, making normal mapping quite obsolete.

More details about the new API will also be released by NVIDIA at its Nvision event in August.

There are huge amounts of information flowing all over the Internet and it seems like we are already making the transition from gigabytes towards terabytes. I, for one, can’t deal with my 400 GB total storage space. When I finally make some space by transferring stuff to DVDs, all that freed space gets immediately clogged with new stuff and I personally don’t like to have heaps and heaps of DVDs. I could buy a 1TB HDD or, better yet, maybe I should buy a couple of the newly announced Seagate 1.5 TB HDDs.

The 1.5 TB HDD is actually Seagate’s 11th generation in the flagship Barracuda 7200 family. Seagate claims that this is the largest capacity hard drive jump in the more than half-century history of hard drives – a half-terabyte increase from the previous highest capacity of 1TB, which is due to the capacity-boosting power of perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.

The improved Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive generation combines proven PMR technology, components and expert manufacturing to provide a maximum capacity of 1.5TB of reliable storage for mainstream desktop computers, workstations, desktop RAID, gaming rigs and high-end PCs, plus the standard USB/FireWire/eSATA external storage types.

The largest capacity drives pack 1.5TB on just four platters and come with fast Serial ATA 3Gb/second interface in order to deliver an industry-leading sustained data rate of up to 120MB/second for fast boot, application startup and file access. The standard desktop 3.5-inch drive will also be available in smaller capacities of 1TB, 750GB, 640GB, 500GB, 320GB and 160GB with cache options of 32MB and 16MB.

The new Barracuda 7200.11 line will be released this August.

Although the R700 Radeon HD 4870 X2 with 2GB of GDDR5 is supposed to be available in late August, ATI has already revealed the price for this card. I was hoping to see it under $500, but I guess the $549 final price is influenced by those 2GB of on-board video memory.

Maybe NVIDIA rushed things with their price slashing. They could have waited a bit more for ATI to announce its prices, but end users can’t complain. The cheapest GTX 280 card can be found on Newegg for $469.99 after a $30 mail in rebate. Prices are clearly going to be further slashed in the next months.
According to Fuzilla, ATI is also planning to release a 4850 X2 version with 1 GB of GDDR5. There’s no official price for this card at the moment, but it can end up costing around $400. We have yet to determine if the 4870 X2 is really worth around $100 more.

Moreover, we shouldn’t be ignoring and underestimating NVIDIA’s 55nm GT200 which could be released this fall. However, if NVIDIA doesn’t care to include GDDR5 in this next version, I dare say it will at most match the performance of the 4870 X2.

We already know that NVIDIA is about to release a PhysX driver for the GF 8/9/GTX 200 and it also mentioned something about making the PhysX platform open source. It would be nice to see how my GTS 8800 can act as a PPU, but I actually plan to make the jump for the Radeon HD 4870 X2 later this summer and I certainly won’t be happy if ATI doesn’t care to release some PhysX driver for the new 4800 family.

According to NGOHQ, ATI does want to include support for the PhysX platform, but AMD is somehow holding things down. ATI feels that AMD is still not being cooperative enough and it fears that the CPU maker could go ahead and strangle the PhysX adaption since AMD and Intel have Havok.

Now, prepare for a bit of a shocker, which, surprisingly enough, stands as the good news. AMD might be reticent about this PhysX deal, but guess who’s teaming up with ATI? Would you believe that NVIDIA is now helping ATI with the project and it seems they are giving ATI their blessings?!!? ATI thinks that NVIDIA is acting this way so it can take on Intel with CUDA and to deal with the latest Havok threat from both AMD and Intel. Wait a second, isn’t ATI supposed to be part of AMD now?

ATI also informs that the CUDA Radeon library is almost done and everything is going as planned on this side. The thing is, ATI can easily integrate the CUDA instructions into the Radeon GPUs, but it also needs to get CUDA support on AMD’s driver level and this make take some more time.

In the last years, every time somebody asked my advice regarding a DVD writer, I leaned towards recommending Samsung or LG drives. Why? Unfortunately, Yamaha doesn't manufacture optical drives anymore, Plextors are usually too expensive, and they use parts that can be found in much cheaper drives, in most cases, Teac also seems to have disappeared from the market, while some other producers don't really live up to the expectation(I won't give any names). To help you in your quest for the best DVD writer you can get for a decent price, today we'll talk about the Samsung SH-S182D , Samsung's first 18X DVD writer, released almost 2 years ago.

Why such an old model? Well, the answer is simple - because it has been tested already by thousands of users, and the later models inherit most of its strong points. Now, since everyone seems to be looking at the features these days, although less than half are really useful to you during the daily use, here's what Samsung SH-S182D was gifted with, as described by its producer:

- Speed Adjustment Technology
Intelligent detection of media type. Error-free reading of all media types, increases life of drive.

- Double O.P.C. Technology
Provides reliable, zero-error recording.

- Tilt Actuator Compensation Technology
Improves recording capability on deformed media.

- Magic Speed
Enables flexibility of drive operation, low noise mode, high-speed mode.

- Buffer Under Run Free Technology
Prevents Buffer Under Run error, enabling high-speed writing of media.

- Weight Balance System Technology
Mechanically designed for minimal vibration and noise.

- Eco-Product
Minimal Usage of drive operation, low noise mode, high-speed mode.

- Firmware Live Update
Automatically upgrades the latest firmware version through Internet by continued support of newer media.

Maximum write speed for DVD+R and DVD-R media is 18X, but that depends on the discs you are using, of course. The (long!) list of supported disc types is this: DVD+R, DVD+R DL, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-R DL, DVD-RW, DVD-Video, DVD-RAM, DVD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-ROM/XA, CD-Audio, Video-CD, Photo CD, CD-I(FMV), CD-Extra, CD-TEXT . Nothing out of ordinary, I guess, but it's good to know...

A little problem for those with new computers could be the fact that the Samsung SH-S182D is a IDE drive, so you will have to use those wide cables...or grab a special (and more expensive) rounded IDE cable, of course!

At last, another drawback for some users could be the lack of Lightscribe support. If you ask me, I labeled about 4-5 discs using Lightscribe in the last 2-3 years so, if you don't really need this feature, the Samsung SH-S182D could be a very good choice, especially since the prices are now extremely low, and if your older computer still misses a DVD writer...you know what to do!