AMD today raised the bar for Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Digital Content Creation (DCC) application performance with the announcement of two new professional graphics accelerators - ATI FirePro V5700 and ATI FirePro V3700. As a part of that announcement, AMD also introduced a new brand for the company's professional graphics accelerators, ATI FirePro, reflecting AMD's continuing and evolving commitment to the professional graphics market.

"Following the ATI acquisition, AMD increased its investment in the professional graphics business and now delivers professional graphics accelerators that perform better than the competition at every price point. The new ATI FirePro brand communicates this focus on performance and features that matter to engineers and designers", said Janet Matsuda, senior director, AMD Professional Graphics. "ATI has been known for delivering value-priced solutions for CAD and DCC professionals. The product reviews over the past year have validated the fact that ATI offers outstanding application performance as well."

According to the Worldwide CAD Market Report 2007-08 published by Jon Peddie Research, in 2007 the installed base of CAD users grew to 5.31 million worldwide - a 20 percent increase from 2006. The firm's analysts also predict the CAD market will continue growth through 2008, with revenues projected to grow 15 percent to $6,025.37 million and reach $8.1 billion by 2012.

"Historically, 3D technologies were expensive and used only by senior designers within a large manufacturer or architectural firm. As technologies advanced and prices dropped, 3D graphics for entry level CAD designers was no longer a pipe dream but a necessity," said Jon Peddie, president and founder of Jon Peddie Research. "Today's entry- and mid-level CAD users need to create and render more complex designs and models, and graphics accelerators from AMD can deliver the performance and reliability professionals need at a price where 3D becomes the rule, not the exception."

Empowering Users with Features that Matter
The ATI FirePro V5700 graphics accelerator delivers the perfect balance of price and application performance for CAD and DCC professionals. With the new card, users will experience increased performance for shader-intensive applications, up to two times more than the previous generation. ATI FirePro V5700 also features 512MB of frame buffer memory, dual link DVI and DisplayPort connections, and its true 30-bit display engine produces more than one billion colors at any given time−empowering designers to see more of their data. Unified Video Decoder 2.0 provides full Blu-ray feature support including dual-stream and picture in a picture (PIP) capabilities, and handles decoding of various formats in the graphics processing unit (GPU), which helps free up the CPU to handle other tasks.

The ATI FirePro V3700 establishes a new, low entry price for professional 3D graphics. For CAD professionals migrating from 2D, the ATI FirePro V3700 graphics card delivers the 3D performance and application certification professionals deserve with an MSRP of $99. The ATI FirePro V3700 graphics accelerator features 256 MB of frame buffer memory, two dual-link DVI connectors and VGA mode support on all display outlets.

"At Dell, we strive to provide design professionals with outstanding 3D graphics technology and with support from AMD, we can meet that need," said Antonio Julio, Director, Dell Product Group. "The Dell Precision T7400, T5400, and T3400 desktop workstations are designed to handle the demands of 3D OpenGL applications for engineering, architecture and digital content creation and we will soon offer ATI FirePro to meet customer needs."

Best In Class Features Across Products
The ATI FirePro V3700 and V5700 cards deliver the industry standard support and features important to today's CAD and DCC users, including Microsoft DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 2.0 support, PCI Express 2.0 interface and Shader Model 4.1.

"Our customers need high performance graphics hardware that is stable, reliable and compatible with eyeon Fusion and eyeon Generation to foster increased collaboration while enabling more complex work," said Steve Roberts, Chief Executive Office, at eye on Software Inc. "Based on our experiences with AMD, we are confident that ATI FirePro 3700 and 5700 can be utilized in unique clustering configurations to meet the specific needs of our visual effects customers and certainly those of the film industry overall. The recent enhancements to ATI's FirePro series are consistent with the company's superior customer service."

At Siggraph 2008, August 12-14, AMD will showcase ATI FirePro professional graphics accelerators in Booth 327 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in California. Additionally, the first comprehensive review of the ATI FirePro V5700, conducted by 3D Professor, is available online at http://www.3dprofessor.org.

Pricing and Availability
The new ATI FirePro V3700 is generally available with an MSRP of $99, and the ATI FirePro V5700 is expected to begin shipping in September 2008 with a MSRP of $599. ATI FirePro, ATI FireGL and ATI FireMV workstation graphics accelerators from AMD are available from workstation OEMs, system integrators and channel partners worldwide.