At SIGGRAPH 2007 today, 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.

"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, senior vice president and general manager, 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.

"ATI FireGL products from AMD are known for bringing key new advancements to the workstation graphics market," said Jon Peddie, principal, Jon Peddie Research. "With first-to-market features like 2GB memory and AutoDetect, AMD should continue to gain traction in the high and ultra-high end segments of this market to compliment their solid showing in the entry-level and mid-range."

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.

"Given the new realistic rendering effects built into SolidWorks 2008, AMD's release of the new ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators gives SolidWorks customers the power and advanced rendering capabilities to boost their productivity and creativity," said Efrat Ravid, director of Marketing and Alliances for SolidWorks. "The innovative unified shader architecture and larger frame buffers of the ATI FireGL accelerators can remove past constraints when working with large data sets, while enabling real-time rendering of more complex assemblies."

"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 Entertainment. "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 2007 and will be available from workstation OEMs, system integrators and channel partners worldwide.