ATI/AMD finally launched their next generation DirectX 10 Video Cards today. The HD 2400, HD 2600 and HD 2900 are now available for purchase. In addition to being DirectX 10 compliant, the cards are also HDCP compliant and have dedicated support for H.264, MPEG 4 AVC, and VC-1 decoding. In the last generation of DirectX 9 cards only the 1600/1650 support HDCP and these were 3rd party cards and not the ATI branded cards. Why is HDCP so important? HD-DVD and Blu-Ray playback on the PC require HDCP complaint video card and display if you want to connect using a digital connection like DVI or HDMI. In XP you can bypass HDCP with ANYDVD but in Vista HDCP is implemented at the OS layer (in addition to application layer) and not JUST the application layer like in XP (application player is software like PowerDVD), therefore to use Vista you need an HDCP complaint card, PERIOD. The HD2400/2600/2900 also bring the latest and greatest in GPU technology with the implementation of features included in the XBOX 360's R500 GPU. Features such as the Unified Shader Architecture allow for shaders to be used for Pixel or Vortex shader operations allowing the GPU to be very efficient and also provides the ability to use more Pixel shaders when necessary (unlike the previous architecture). I will have one in my hands very soon (HD 2900). Stay tuned for impressions...

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