TI has
spent much of the last decade producing the FireGL line of high-end
workstation graphics cards,
regularly challenging and often times besting competing products from
Nvidia's Quadro lineup. ATI's last generation of FireGL products, which
we covered heavily, were excellent all around performers. It
certainly wasn't perfect (a bit too loud, a bit too expensive), but was
definitely solid improvements over the generation of FireGL cards which
preceded it. Now in late 2008, we're seeing ATI / AMD's first moves to
eventually kill off the long-known FireGL brand. Its replacement? The
ATI FirePro. ATI has yet to introduce top to bottom FirePro-class
products to replace the FireGL, but it's delivered the first four cards
of many to come in the future. The name change makes since, as high-end
workstation cards are often used beyond the realm of 3D graphics today.
Workstation-class graphics cards are used for physics, general purpose
computing, HPC, and for game design, not just for OpenGL
based modeling and CAD work. While the new FirePro lineup of cards are
certainly just as fast as ever for OpenGL, ATI is doing its best to make
it known that the cards are capable of much more. Sporting a new name,
ATI has released four new workstation cards under the FirePro moniker.
On the low-end you have the FirePro V3700 followed by the mid-range
V3750 and V5700 models, along with the new high-end model which we'll be
looking at today, the FirePro V8700. The FirePro V8700 currently reigns
as ATI's top-tier flagship FirePro model, as the first
workstation-class card to ship which is based on ATI's R700 graphics
architecture. As avid readers will no doubt realize, the RV770 is the
same architecture which ATI used in its Radeon
HD 4x00 lineup for high-end gaming. As the RV770 graphics processor
proved to be a smashing success for gamers with the Radeon HD 4850, HD
4870 and HD 4870 X2 cards, ATI is hoping that workstation users will see
the same type of benefits.
Unlike
most of the HD 4x00 series lineup for gamers, the FirePro has some
additional features to make it to appeal to the professional crowd --
double the memory of most of the gaming series (1 GB), native
DisplayPort outputs, stereo output, not to mention customized drivers to
accelerate high-end workstation applications. Of course, these
additional features and performance don't come cheap, as the new FirePro
V8700 card comes with a whopping $1,499 price tag. It may sound
daunting at first, but considering that we are expecting this card to
deliver the professional-level performance at the same level (or higher)
than their previous generation $2,799 FireGL V8650 card, the FirePro is
already looking like a relative bargain. Yes--we said
relative. Let's continue.
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TI has
spent much of the last decade producing the FireGL line of high-end
workstation graphics cards,
regularly challenging and often times besting competing products from
Nvidia's Quadro lineup. ATI's last generation of FireGL products, which
we covered heavily, were excellent all around performers. It
certainly wasn't perfect (a bit too loud, a bit too expensive), but was
definitely solid improvements over the generation of FireGL cards which
preceded it. Now in late 2008, we're seeing ATI / AMD's first moves to
eventually kill off the long-known FireGL brand. Its replacement? The
ATI FirePro. ATI has yet to introduce top to bottom FirePro-class
products to replace the FireGL, but it's delivered the first four cards
of many to come in the future. The name change makes since, as high-end
workstation cards are often used beyond the realm of 3D graphics today.
Workstation-class graphics cards are used for physics, general purpose
computing, HPC, and for game design, not just for OpenGL
based modeling and CAD work. While the new FirePro lineup of cards are
certainly just as fast as ever for OpenGL, ATI is doing its best to make
it known that the cards are capable of much more. Sporting a new name,
ATI has released four new workstation cards under the FirePro moniker.
On the low-end you have the FirePro V3700 followed by the mid-range
V3750 and V5700 models, along with the new high-end model which we'll be
looking at today, the FirePro V8700. The FirePro V8700 currently reigns
as ATI's top-tier flagship FirePro model, as the first
workstation-class card to ship which is based on ATI's R700 graphics
architecture. As avid readers will no doubt realize, the RV770 is the
same architecture which ATI used in its Radeon
HD 4x00 lineup for high-end gaming. As the RV770 graphics processor
proved to be a smashing success for gamers with the Radeon HD 4850, HD
4870 and HD 4870 X2 cards, ATI is hoping that workstation users will see
the same type of benefits.
Unlike
most of the HD 4x00 series lineup for gamers, the FirePro has some
additional features to make it to appeal to the professional crowd --
double the memory of most of the gaming series (1 GB), native
DisplayPort outputs, stereo output, not to mention customized drivers to
accelerate high-end workstation applications. Of course, these
additional features and performance don't come cheap, as the new FirePro
V8700 card comes with a whopping $1,499 price tag. It may sound
daunting at first, but considering that we are expecting this card to
deliver the professional-level performance at the same level (or higher)
than their previous generation $2,799 FireGL V8650 card, the FirePro is
already looking like a relative bargain. Yes--we said
relative. Let's continue.