Pull Her Dog Tags Mate......

XFX’s “serious gamer” Alpha Dog Edition is here, featuring all the 128 shader units it’s supposed to. The only thing that distinguishes this card from the GTX/ Ultra models is the 256 bit memory interface. The card features a core factory overclocked to 678 MHz (the default core speed is 650 MHz), and here’s where the fun begins- the core is now faster than an 8800 GTX, and the scores show it. Shader clocks are also up to 1700 MHz from the default 1625 MHz. Of course the 8800 GTS Alpha Dog still has restriction of 16 ROPs (Raster Operations), as opposed to the 24 ROPs on GTX/ Ultra cards.

Nevertheless this card has some serious horsepower, and runs noticeably cooler than 8800 GTX and Ultra cards; it’s a little shorter, too- 9.5 inches as opposed to 11 inches on the older cards. Priced lower than its older sibling, running cooler and basically having less power requirements seems like the XFX 8800GTS 512 Alpha Dog Edition has all the accolades in its kitty. Lost planet is a sweet bundle. At $ 300, the XFX is costly now. Yes its $ 125 cheaper than the GTX series of GPUs but the new 8800GT core changes things considerably. Eighty-five percent of the performance at nearly sixty percent price! This card is a mite too expensive to be of any use to the discerning gamer who will likely buy two 8800 GTs for a little more than the price of a single 8800 GTS, and use them in an SLI setup.

Specifications: Core clock: 678 MHz, Shader clock: 1700 MHz, Memory clock: 986 MHz, Memory interface: 256 bit, Memory bandwidth: 63.1 GB/s, Shader units: 128

DirectX 10 what's new???

Microsoft DirectX is a set of APIs for handling tasks related to multimedia, and gaming. It was designed to provide a much broader gaming or multimedia environment. Starting off with DirectX 3, various DirectX versions are out, namely DirectX 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. It works by giving direct access to low-level functions of a peripheral by providing a set of APIs (application programming interface).Every new version of DirectX adds support for new hardware features, allowing game developers to push the boundaries of realism a little bit further.
DirectX9 being a huge hit embedded a lot of unique and new features but due to fixed number of vertex units and pixel processing units and its huge dependability on CPU DirectX9 had to face problems like API object overhead.
With games becoming more and more realistic there was need for a newer and powerful API, and the answer came as DirectX 10.The API of DirectX 10 has been written from ground and the new and improved API reduces API overhead to a greater extent. Object overhead is also reduced so that more unique objects can be shown in a scene at one time. A new exciting feature called Geometry shader is added in the new API. So, what makes DirectX10 so powerful? The answer lies in the unified architecture of the new API. This unified API and GPU architecture sums the traditional vertex, pixel and geometry units into one processing units instead of separate ones. So the API can handle these instructions through one single instruction only. The key idea behind a unified architecture is to make the GPU from a render processor to a complete processor; i.e the GPU can now perform more functions like physics, AI, animation and many other processes improving the gaming experience. New features will also allow the possibility of new 3D effects in games.
Although power packed the only demerit with DirectX10 is that it is tied to Windows Vista, so in need to experience DirectX10 powered games we have to switch to windows vista. For now, the DirectX 10 API is a move in the right direction when it comes to gaming, and it can be easily said that it will allow future GPUs from ATI and NVIDIA to rise in the gaming arena.
The figure shows how images are rendered in DirectX10: