Following the release of Windows 7, the first DirectX 11-capable benchmark tool has been released by Unigine.

You can grab the 127MB Heaven benchmark on FileShack. There's also a playthrough of the new DX11 features available to watch below:

Please install Flash to view this Shackvideo

Shackvideo users can use the HD Stream.

"It would be good if everybody switched to Windows 7 as quickly as possible," Brad Wardell, CEO of Demigod publisher and Impulse operator Stardock, has said.

Speaking with Gamasutra, he cited the WARP (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform) feature of the new operating system as a major boon, as it allows the CPU to handle DirectX acceleration if a dedicated video card isn't up to snuff, or even present.

"We want the game to look incredible on high-end systems, but I want people to be able to play this on their three-year-old laptop on the airplane," he explained.

In addition to running the digital distribution platform Impulse and... Read more

Yesterday marked the first evidence of a serious PC gaming strategy from Microsoft.

With the release of a new Games for Windows Live interface, the announcement of an upcoming DLC-focused Marketplace, and the mention of plans to bring full PC digital distribution to the service, the Xbox guys have finally given us a reason to take a hard look at their PC philosophy.

Conveniently, I had the chance to sit down and throw a number of questions at Games for Windows general manager Chris Early and marketing manager Michael Wolf.

How is this new Marketplace going to work? What kind of cut is Microsoft getting on sales? What does it mean when a game is a Games for Windows Live exclusive? What does all of this mean for Windows 7? Find out the answers to these questions and more inside the fold.

Chris Early: I know that when we launched Games for Windows Live, you could play PC to PC free, but if you wanted to play with Xbox [users] you had to pay $50 to do that. Now was that smart in retrospect, when we listen? No. So we corrected it. Now would it have been better if we had been smart enough to think of that in advance? Yes. But fortunately we had plenty of helpful players who helped "guide" us there. [laughs] Read on..

A new screenshot from a recent build of the next Windows shows that developer Microsoft is planning to incorporate more robust PC gaming functionality into its operating software.

According to an image from ThinkNext, the games startup menu in the current build of Windows 7 includes an option to automatically alert users to updates for PC games. An option box to allow Windows to auto-download "information and news about games and game providers" is also shown.

Windows 7 is expected to be released in January 2010.