New AMD Graphics Cards Support Microsoft`s Windows 7 OS

Advanced Micro Devices is rolling out two more graphics card models designed to drive its ATI Radeon technology into lower cost devices and to take advantage of Microsoft’s release of its Windows 7 operating system.

Microsoft is scheduled to launch Windows 7 Oct. 22.

AMD officials are touting the new ATI Radeon HD 5770 and 5750 graphics cards, announced Oct. 19, for their ability to support Microsoft’s DirectX 11 graphics technology for gamers that will arrive with Windows 7.

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The new cards also support AMD’s TI Eyefinity technology, which enables users to run their tasks on up to three displays on a single 5770 or 5750 card.

“The ATI Radeon HD 5700 series takes the same great features, like ATI Eyefinity and ATI Stream technology, as well as full hardware support for all DirectX 11 features, and bundles them into products priced well below $200,” Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s Products Group, said in a statement.

The cards, built on IBM’s 40-nanometer manufacturing process, offer more that a teraflop (or trillion floating point operations per second) of compute power.

Industry analysts noted that graphics chips that support each new version of Microsoft’s DirectX technology have seen shipments ramp up earlier in their life cycles than their predecessors, and they are predicting the same for those GPUs that support DirectX 11.

AMD has aggressively ramped up its GPU portfolio as it takes on Nvidia in the space. AMD officials in May announced that they were merging their CPU and GPU businesses, calling it a key differentiator from competitors such as Intel and Nvidia.