Conclusions and Exclusive Q & A with Janet Matsuda, Senior Director Professional Graphics

Recently we have come to expect nothing but the exceptional best out from the ATI FirePro camp, today is no less different.  A card that romps home in such style, precision and costs less than $600 we all must be sitting up and taking complete stock of what has been achieved here.   So much - for just so little.   Who would have thought that a 128-bit controller card with DDR3 memory would outperform its older brother the V5600.  These two cards fresh out the stable doors will be now bolting down the streets like young Stallions.

The standards built into the card are exceptional value for money and as we have witnessed here, the Displayport output at maximum resolution was simply mind bogglingly clear.   The new Dell 27" 2709W Black Widescreen LCD monitor shown at the full native 1920 X 1200 was crystal sharp and the imagery as clear as the blue skies here.   Our thanks to Scan Computers for getting this magnificent beast here for the ATI FirePro V5700’s first outing.  We all thought that when DVI came out this was the upgrade path to go, along came the shortly to live HDMI and this was a huge leap forward, DisplayPort; you have to experience it to see just how good it really is.

Remember the new V7700 was the first professional graphics card to fully support the new DisplayPort Technology which means Maximum Resolution of 2560x1600 in 10-bit color depth DRM Support.  This also sees a reduction in precious KWH output and a single cable for audio and video output.   Look closely at the card pictures shown of the FirePro V5700 as we have deliberately left out one important piece of information which will have many of you now wondering, “What is that for”.   For now you will have to wait and see for our next outing, though for now and to jog the monocell that has been very busy absorbing the data from within;

• Next generation GPU with 320 unified shader processors

• 512MB Memory

• 2 DisplayPort and 1 Dual Link enabled DVI Output

• High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering with 8-bit, 10-bit, and 16-bit per RGB colour component

• Multi-Card Support Drives Up To Four 3D Displays

• Full Blu-ray feature support with Unified Video Decoder 2.0

• Decode VC-1, H.264 and MPEG-2

• Offload CPU for other tasks

• Dual-stream and picture in picture (PIP) capabilities

In order to keep things fluent and keep the hot pace of this exclusive article today we managed to sneak in a few questions live with Janet Matsuda who is Senior Director Professional Graphics for the ATI FirePro Division.

Janet, thank you for taking time with us today and so as not to hold up the readers to much we have a few questions that all will be on all the tips of many tongues today;

3D Professor - Why are we now seeing such a significant name change for the FireGL Product range?

Janet Matsuda - The ATI FirePro brand signals a change to the market.  The change began last year with the ATI FireGL products announced at Siggraph 2007. AMD has leading performance at every price point, robust Linux support and advanced features like DisplayPort and 10-bit colour.  In addition, ATI FirePro unifies our 3D and 2D multi-view offering with a single brand for new professional graphics products from AMD.

3D Professor - How do you see the way ahead now and for the forthcoming 6 months with these exciting new products hitting the major OEM’s?

Janet Matsuda - The OEMs are impressed by the performance and features of ATI FirePro and we are working with them to expanding their ATI offering.

3D Professor - What impact is real-time rendering going to have within the professional community.

Janet Matsuda – Real time rendering will revolutionize the workflow by allowing designers to increase the number of iterations and deliver better designs faster.  Today ATI FirePro delivers leading performance for high quality rendering.

3D Professor - Many software applications in the CAD and DCC are becoming CPU limited rather than graphics limited. How are VBOs accelerating application performance.

Janet Matsuda – Applications must continually be tuned to take full advantage of the most recent innovations in graphics hardware. Vertex buffer objects enable more efficient use of framebuffer memory and reduce the instances the GPU is waiting for the CPU. By using vertex buffer objects (VBOs) in applications, the performance can be accelerated up to ten times.

Janet thank you for explaining these points which should clear up those all important questions our viewing audience today will be pondering over.

The buzz word "VBO" many now will be wondering how this works, therefore in a simplistic explanation.

Vertex Buffer Object and is a way for the graphics card to store the geometry on the card without having to push the geometry back down the bus to the CPU to calculate changes.    It’s important because it increases the performance of rotations, for example, by over 5 times with larger models.    No creative designer likes waiting for their system to update the screen so this greatly increases their productivity.

It has been one of those events that we would have wished to have shown more, but the clock ticked hard and fast against us as there is a huge demand to see this excellent new graphics card from ATI.  There is so much it has to offer.   As time really was completely against us and we only had a short few days to complete all from fresh.    What is conclusive; is that the base line tests from SPECviewperf® 10.0 have returned substantial amounts of indisputable results for the AMD’s FirePro (FireGL) V5700 which is exceptional for a mid range level professional card.

To complete all of the tests on the system does take considerable amounts of time to accomplish. As a point of note and this is not for the faint hearted; it can take at least a full 3 – 4 hours to properly complete a complete “run all tests” of SPECviewperf® 10.0 depending on the system and professional graphic’s card under test.   Taking these facts this into account, it therefore takes a full 2 days to completely set up each system and run the benchmarks correctly for each card.    What may seem like a few simple scores actually takes a full 4 working days to complete properly. We do rerun the test several times after to ensure that the first out results contain no anomalies.

The results that have been shown on this review are from the benchmarks first run in accordance with the SPECviewperf® fair play rules.  Not the average of 3 or so runs as some places seem to think is right.

For those of you who may have slightly over looked the fact, it has to be also noted that Skulltrail PCI Express Rail currently runs at PCI Express* 1.1 x16 and the X48 Bonetrail’s II PCI Express Rail runs at PCI Express* 2.0 x16 standard.  These are very important factual points of note to take away when comparing the results.  With this in mind we have to look forward to the future of what Intel is proposing in bringing to the fore, speculation is in many places running amok with wild presumptions.  Swiftly covering Intel, we ask about nVIDIA, rumour has it that the Quadro FX 4800 and FX 5800 are to hit the ground running very soon supporting at long last DisplayPort Technology.  So at long last the scuttlebutt rumours can be put to rest.

The new technology uptake that AMD’s FirePro team has brought to the fore with this release, most certainly is the most comprehensive outing of a new professional graphic card.  Not so in this instance and we must applaud AMD’s FireGL team for getting all right first time around.   It is a magnificent achievement to bring so much out enhanced high quality technology in one swift move.     Analysts and investors alike are now extremely pleased at the aggressive approach in the market share recovery with these exceptional products.

To reiterate; for those who skipped out a few pages a brief summary of the SPECviewperf® 10.0 results

The points gained within SPEC and independent reviews can mean either considerable gains or loses at these mission critical levels.  Many, many important eyes watch results of this magnitude.   Importantly to gain results of this enormity the correct hardware has to be carefully chosen.  A good example is the Western Digital VelociRaptor shown here today.  The FirePro V5700 and VelociRaptor are an exceptional combination.   The VelociRaptor should be seriously considered as the hard disc of choice in any builds that demands blistering continuous performance.

Availability of the cards!  We can confirm that the AMD (ATI) FirePro (FireGL) V5700 will be shipping from distributors into the EU and UK in September 2008.  Current MRSP (Ex Taxes and VAT) of the AMD FireGL V5700 – $599 US Dollars, £280 UK Pounds, €335 Euros

Taking into consideration its price performance point we have to seriously think about this card when buying a new system or upgrading.     At a MRSP price point of just $599 US Dollars or £280 UK Pounds ,   the irrefutable results shown here today verbalize volumes.    You have to be completely irrational to miss out on an opportunity of this magnitude.  It does not take a mathematician or rocket scientist to formulate out the answer……………………………Let the price wars begin.

The same old arguments are given what of support?   We now know that AMD have a some 175 + team dedicated to the FireGL cards and are delivering out on time hot fixes and vastly improved updated drivers all the time.   This now should put paid to any unfounded rumours which the scuttlebutt may have started and firmly put to rest those idiotic claims.  In over a year and 6 brand new amazing products have slam dunked out the door covering the full remit from entry level all the way up to the Ultra High End, 2GB V8650.  

To ever so briefly deviate and to give an idea on the whole systems performed overall and once more to recap.  

A few months back we were all completely astonished at the 30 minute barrier being broken.  How long before we see the 5 minute barrier being smashed in Radiosity?  Time will tell very soon.

On a further important note which you the reader must take fully into consideration.   The FirePro (FireGL) V5700 shown here today is an early shipping sample and there is a slight change to the cooling array shown today.   The drivers used should be WHQL within the next week and should see improvements on what has been incredibly shown here today.

The titanium red gauntlet which was thrown down from AMD’s FirePro Team to nVIDIA has yet to be picked up they are still well behind!   Major film studios, high-end architects, Gas & Oil Community, Medical & Ultra High-end Imaging Studios/ Life Sciences / Acquisition Modalities all alike have the raw power now from just the 1 card to achieve more than their wildest dreams without spending an absolute fortune on something else.   These specialist cards are not the standard cash cows for both AMD and NVIDIA and rely upon the major specialist organisations to pick up on these articles like these very quickly.    Once more with the results shown they have to seriously consider what has been shown today.

What of the future, well time will tell what is to come next, though whatever comes from the FirePro camp next is most definitely to be something more spectacular than has been shown today.  Just now you have to sit back in awe at what the FirePro V5700 has to offer. 

The year’s fiscal turn is gone and many will be out there with much cash to burn in those deep pockets.  But take stock of what has been shown today and you can save for something possibly bigger and better.   The crystal ball just now is a tad fuzzy.   Though with what has been shown today, the conclusions one must be thinking are very decisive; one cannot escape from hard factual unequivocal evidence that has been displayed.

It remains so that the precious diamond studded golden crown in the professional graphic card arena remains firmly in the clutch of ATI’S FirePro titanium fist.

The ATI FirePro Team firmly maintain their current status of being the Governing Power in the Workstation place.

www.3dprofessor.org award for the AMD’s FirePro (FireGL) V5700 Mid Range
Professional Workstation Card

EDITORS CHOICE

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - Introduction Continued
Page 3 - Pictures of the ATI FirePro (FireGL) V5700
Page 4 - System Configurations and Software Tests
Page 5 - 3DS Max 9 SP2 Scenes
Page 6 - PC Mark 2005 & MAXON Cinebench 10
Page 7 - SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
Page 8 - SPECviewperf® 10.0
Page 9 - Conclusions and Exclusive Q & A with Janet Matsuda, Senior Director Professional Graphics