With the pending release of Windows 7 and thus the highly anticipated DirectX 11 most of us expected NVIDIA to deliver at least one DX11 class graphics card roughly in the Windows 7 release time-frame. As it looks right now, that's not going to be the case. In fact it might not even be 2009 at all.

Earlier last week at Computex ATI already hinted about a DX11 class graphics card under codename EVERGREEN. That product will definitely be available in Q4 2009.

Though an unfounded rumor, it seems that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is reponsible for leaking information about the fact that NVIDIA is redesigning it's future GPUs. As a result they'll be launched probably in the first half of 2010. The reasoning behind a redesign is not known. Mind you that this is a rumor, not a fact. I can't stress that enough.

Either way, for AMD this means good news, as they'll be the first with a DX11 class adapter on the market.

Of course the success of DX11 will be highly dependant on actual DX11 class games. According to ATI ATI developers like Codemasters, Phenomic, Electronic Arts, Emergent and Rebellion will be amongst the first to release DirectX 11 class games.