AMD (http://www.amd.com) has launched the first of a new family of ATI FirePro professional graphics solutions with ATI Eyefinity technology. No word on if or when they’ll come to the Mac Pro.
The ATI FirePro V8800 is “the industry’s most powerful professional graphics card ever created2 and the only professional graphics solution in the world supporting ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology and Microsoft DirectX 11 technology, says Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, AMD Products Group. It has a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of US$1,499.
The ATI FirePro V8800 delivers 2.6 teraflops of raw computing power with the highest memory bandwidth (147.2 GB/s) available in any single-card professional graphics solution — more than two times the compute power of the previous generation, Bergman says. In the coming months AMD plans to round out its next-generation ATI FirePro family, offering a number of solutions to meet the various 2D and 3D needs of professionals working in CAD, digital content creation, broadcast, medical imaging and financial services, he says.
With ATI Eyefinity technology, professionals can use up to 2x the screen workspace with a single card. Three and four display desktop configurations can be enabled with the ATI FirePro V8800; users only need to connect the additional displays to the graphics card. What’s more, next generation ATI FirePro professional graphics are designed for and ready to support leading industry standard application interfaces, including OpenGL and OpenCL.