Cheers nexty for this.. Industry sources have confirmed that Microsoft"s DirectX 9 is likely to arrive in October, quite a while later than ATI"s R300 Nvidia-buster.
A few months ago we thought that Microsoft might manage to get DirectX 9 out of the door in September but the schedule has slipped a full month.
This echoes the nasty situation with DirectX 8.1 last year, when ATI shipped beta versions of this version with its first Radeon 8500.
The problem last time round was that if you didn"t have the guts to get your virtual registry screwdriver out, the only other way to install the newer application program interface (API) was to reinstall Windows.
It"s unclear how ATI will solve the problem with DirectX 9, as it readies its R300 and RV250 cards for a mid-July launch.
Madonion developers of one of the most used DirectX 8 tests, 3Dmark 2001 SE, have told us a few times that it will introduce its new 3dmark 2003 or whatever it is to be called, with the DirectX 9 introduction but not before.
We are now more than sure that R300, which will have a different name than the Radeon 10 000, will be without the official version of DirectX 9.