ATI Introduces FireGL V5000

karvind writes "Folks at Tomshardware> are running a review of ATI's new FireGL V5000. The card's X700 processor, code named R410GL, is based on a 110-nanometer process and the card sports eight pixel pipelines, six geometry engines, 128 MB of GDDR3 memory, dual DVI connectors for multi-display applications and dual link support for 9 megapixels displays. Anandtech also posted a review."

Re:One man's mid-range is another man's budget....

[TheKidWho]

It's a workstation graphics card, not a gaming card...
Take a loot at the other FireGL's or Quadros, they go in the price range of $2,000 and above!

Ati Schmati

[darth_silliarse]

Bet the drivers suck for a year as usual, just in time for the next product line....

well

[FidelCatsro]

You can do a small modification to some ATI radeons to make them fireGL cards http://www.rojakpot.com.nyud.net:8090/default.aspx ?location=3&var1=185&var2=0 [nyud.net]

Re:Sometimes I get confused...

[delirium of disorder]

$700 is still mid-range. You want high end....check this out:

http://www.sgi.com/products/visualization/prism/

Re:How do these compare

[TheKidWho]

The drivers are more optimized for the tasks that they perform. And yes there are benchmarks, and no they are not better then gaming specific cards. Usually the gaming specific video cards beat the living shit out of the workstation graphics cards.

Here [anandtech.com]

Aren't FireGLs the same as regular cards?

[BigBuckHunter]

If I remember correctly, ATI fireGL cards are the same chip as their normal line, with one or two resistors added/removed from the external chip packaging. All you have to do is:

1: Remove/add the resistors and change the BIOS.
or

2: Used a readily available hacked driver to recognize your stock card as a FireGL

All in all, there is no market for a 128MB solid modeling card. We had 128MB video cards in 1996 (Glint based). This card would be a huge step backward for a number of engineers.

BBH

Re:GL?

[tonsofpcs]

The FireGL series has been around since it was a workstation graphics card line owned by Diamond. ATI bought Diamond's graphics cards a while ago, and then started to make their own FireGLs. The new ones are more for gaming than the old ones were, but they are still decent workstation graphics cards. They are supported in Linux using the default ATI driver as far as I am aware. These cards are called FireGL due to their amazing OpenGL accelleration.

My Diamond FireGL 3000 is sitting around waiting for a new machine (old one died), until then, I cannot really tell you much about Linux support.

Confirmation

[Dixie Flatliner]

Workstation cards provide almost no performance for games, unless those games are entirely OpenGL based, in which case they simply provide very poor performance. They do however run Maya and other high end rendering environments, something even your papa's SLI 6800U can't handle. Although I've tried another FireGL card in this performance range and was less then impressed. Stick with a FX3000 Quadro if you're at all serious about what you do.

And yes, it will work perfectly with an Apple 30" Cinema display.

Apple 30" Cinema
Dual Xeon 3.2GHz
4GB ECC DDR RAM
Quadro FX3400

Re:Not only software, also hardware

[TheRaven64]

Dual Link DVI is not the same thing as simply having two DVI ports. Dual Link DVI ports (of which this card has two) have twice the signal bandwidth of standard DVI ports, and so can drive higher resolution displays.