Windows 7 is expected to be released in the first quarter of 2010 and Windows 7 will come with DirectX 11, near the end of this year 2009 we can expect some DirectX 11 hardware's.

Nvidia and ATI are said to launch their DirectX 11 graphics cards at the end of this year, these cards will be based on 40nm process technology and in 1st or 2nd quarter of 2010 we can expect some DirectX 11 games too.

Nvidia's 40nm video cards with DirectX 10 support are rumored to launch in Q2 of 2009 and their next generation 40nm card will most likely to hit market in December of this year which will come with DirectX 11 support.

1st generation of 40nm cards from Nvidia will be identical to GT200 chip, though it will be a die shrink from 55nm to 40nm there will be some changes in specification as this will not be the same GT200 chip but rather a totally new chip build on a smaller die. Die shrink also mean smaller transistors, lower TDP and less heat dissipation which will result in better overclocking GPU.

These 40nm chips are likely to come with increased shaders, clusters, ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines) and TMUs (Texture Memory Units), at higher clocks.

Though the rumors are Nvidia and AMD both will launch their 40nm fabricated chips in March or April of 2009, there are no exact words on who will launch a high-end GPU and who will bring a Mainstream GPU?.

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