AMD claims lead in DirectX 11 market

Company says it has a six month head start on the competition with new cards

AMD's new graphics cards are being released before the Windows 7 launch

AMD has launched two new graphics cards that it says are the only DirectX 11-compatible hardware on the market.

The ATI Radeon HD 5870 and the ATI Radeon HD 5850 are being released before the Windows 7 launch that will see DirectX 11 launched. AMD estimates that it will be six months before any other graphics cards come out that support the standard.

Patrick Moorhead, vice president of advanced marketing at AMD, said: “The technology refresh rate in graphics is incredible.

“We put out a new GPU 15 months ago and the new one has more than doubled in performance.”

The new cards can drive three screens simultaneously, augmenting the Eyefinity card launched earlier this month, which can run six at a time. The company has claimed the future of graphics cards is in multi-monitor systems.