AMD Radeon HD 5800 series technology preview

Unless you've been residing off-planet for a little while, you've probably noticed or realised that the second half of 2009 is turning into a decidedly important time for a PC hardware industry that has been left reeling somewhat by the global economic situation.  While Intel has released a bundle of new mainstream CPUs, and AMD have looked to improve their own CPU offerings recently, there are even more vital inflection points just around the corner.  At the top of this list is, of course, Windows 7, which ships to retail customers towards the end of October; that in itself will most likely drive many sectors of the hardware industry, but in particular it provides a timely boost for the graphics board manufacturers in the form of DirectX 11, which will also be released for Windows Vista at roughly the same time.

Packing a host of new and improved features, and with what promises to be a wider install base than the Windows Vista only DirectX 10, hopes are high that the promise of DirectX 11 will send buyers rushing out into the streets to buy compatible cards, while this promise has also brought about a race to release the first hardware to support the new API.

For this generation, there can be no doubt as to who has won that race, as today we're here to talk about the launch of AMD's Radeon HD 5800 architecture and series of graphics boards - The first DirectX 11 parts to hit the market, with nary a peep from bitter rivals NVIDIA in sight.  So, it's a good day to be working for AMD, and in particular their ATI graphics division, but just what makes this new architecture tick?  That's exactly what we're here to find out, as we delve into the world of the "Cypress" GPU core to see what secrets it holds within.