At SIGGRAPH 2007, AMD (booth #1102) announced five new high-performance ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators for CAD, DCC and medical imaging professionals. The ATI FireGL V8650, FireGL V8600, FireGL V7600, FireGL V5600 and FireGL V3600 graphics boards are based on the next-generation ATI GPUs with an innovative unified shader architecture featuring up to 320 individual stream processing units. These new boards deliver acceleration of DirectX 10- and OpenGL 2.1-based professional applications resulting in increased performance of more than 300% as compared to the previous generation of product.
"The rich feature set of these new ATI FireGL boards represents AMD's industry-leading GPU engineering excellence and provides unprecedented power for design professionals," said Rick Bergman, svp and gm, AMD Graphics Products Group. "AMD's ability to continually offer graphics innovation at the high end, while delivering full-featured products at the entry level reflects our strategy of enabling the ultimate visual experience for professional designers and those who consume their content."
Several key features distinguish the new series of ATI FireGL workstation graphics boards. An industry-first 2GB of on-board memory enables engineers and designers to interact with larger datasets and more complex models. The ATI FireGL unified shader architecture maximizes graphics throughput for today's engineering and animation software. During performance tests, the ATI FireGL V5600 demonstrates more than 300% the performance of the ATI FireGL V5200 running the Viewperf 9.0.3 UGS Teamcenter Visualization Mockup (tcvis-01) benchmark test.
AMD's unique AutoDetect feature instinctively optimizes the graphics driver based on the user's specific software applications even while running multiple programs simultaneously. With AutoDetect, end users are no longer required to manually adjust application specific settings, even when toggling between different applications.
The rigorous, application-specific certification process of ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators ensures a level of reliability that graphics professionals expect and trust. All ATI FireGL Visualization series products utilize a unified driver, which simplifies installation, deployment and maintenance, while support for Microsoft Vista enables future compatibility. Native multi-card support maximizes output flexibility by enabling larger displays, higher resolutions and the ability to drive four screens from two graphics cards in the same workstation. In addition, stream computing applications can leverage the massively parallel processing capability of the GPU for compute-intensive tasks such as physics, structural analysis and financial modeling.
"With a dizzying amount of graphics horsepower, support for the latest versions of DirectX and OpenGL, plus optimizations for SOFTIMAGE|XSI software, the ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators can help our customers meet their tight deadlines," said Mark Schoennagel, 3D evangelist and hardware certification manager at Softimage. "In a production environment, when 3D artists or technical directors are running a variety of software tools, the ATI FireGL accelerator automatically configures to provide maximum compatibility with SOFTIMAGE|XSI 3D software for screaming graphics performance, and an automatically streamlined production process."
"We look forward to working with the new ATI FireGL family of products. AMD has a history of innovation and delivering excellent value and performance," said Rob Hoffmann, senior 3D product marketing manager for Autodesk Media and Ent. "Professional content creators will appreciate features that increase visual fidelity and performance. We expect Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max customers to see a significant performance increase using the next generation ATI FireGL graphics cards."
The new series of ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators from AMD are expected to begin shipping in September and will be available from workstation OEMs, system integrators and channel partners worldwide.
Prices are as follows:
* ATI FireGL V8650 (2 GB memory) $2,799
* ATI FireGL V8600 (1 GB memory) $1,899
* ATI FireGL V7600 (512 MB memory) $999
* ATI FireGL V5600 (512 MB memory $599
* ATI FireGL V3600 (256 MB memory) $299
Advanced Micro Devices (www.amd.com) is a leading global provider of innovative processing solutions in the computing, graphics and consumer electronics markets.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
