AMD/ATI is promising workstation graphics professionals a 300% improvement in performance compared with previous 3D products following the introduction of five graphics accelerators. The GPUs are targeted at CAD, DCC and medical imaging professionals and come with a new unified shader architecture featuring up to 320 individual stream processing units. The boards that are based on the new GPUs are the ATI FireGL V8650, V8600, V7600, V5600 and V3600. They are being touted as the first to sport 2GB of onboard memory. ATI has claimed that when running DirectX 10 and OpenGL 2.1-based professional applications, the cards are 300 per cent faster than the previous professional ATI products. The new series of ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators are expected to start shipping next month and will appear in cards and systems from workstation OEMs, system integrators and channel partners.