AMD 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 graphics processing unit (GPU) 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. An industry-first 2GB of on-board memory (ATI FireGL V8650) enables engineers and designers to interact with larger datasets and more complex models. 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. The new series of ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators from AMD are expected to begin shipping in September 2007 and will be available from workstation OEMs, system integrators and channel partners worldwide. ATI FireGL V8650 with 2GB memory will retail for $2799, V8600 with 1GB memory for $1899, V5600 with 512MB memory for $599 and V3600 with 256MB memory for $299.