DirectX 9.0 SDK Update (Summer 2004) Beta 2 Release

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The DirectX® Team is pleased to announce the release of DirectX 9.0 SDK Update (Summer 2004) - Beta 2. This Beta release contains the full DirectX SDK which features the initial Beta release of the DirectX 9.0c developer runtime.
Areas of concentration in the DirectX 9.0 SDK Update (Summer 2004) Beta release are:

HLSL support for Pixel Shader & Vertex Shader 3.0
Effects Framework performance improvements
Pre computed Radiance Transfer improvements
New Sample framework
New & Updated Samples (and removal of some crusty ones)
PIX tool for better debugging of Direct3D applications

As this beta release of the DirectX 9.0 SDK Update (Summer 2004), we hope you will take the opportunity to install it, work with the new features and provide feedback through BetaPlace. We look to you and your feedback to help get the kinks out prior to the next beta release.

Thanks,
DirectX Team

News source: Beta Place

As the Web page notes, owners of those ThinkPad models can check whether their system needs the upgrade by doing the following:

• Click Start, select Settings, select Control Panel, then double-click the System icon.

• Click the Hardware tab, then click Device Manager.

• Open the Device Manager

• Expand the Disk Drives section to view all hard disk drives in the system, and look for a drive model number that reads HTS726060M9AT00.