A year has passed now since the successful launch of ATI® FirePro™ range, and it has to be acknowledged by many as a successful mid range card that has a bit of bang to it.   In recent months we have covered all the high performing ATI® FirePro™ performance cards and they have without doubt caught many unawares to the sheer power beneath the hood.  Like all professional cards the refresh comes along and we see a good line extension of the ATI® FirePro™ V5800 which brings a slight change toe the I/O outputs of Two Dual Link DVI’s.  The performance remains the same which is a good advantage to the end-user. Bouncing right in we notice a significant difference within the cards design as you will note within page 2. Smaller and yet much more powerful than its predecessor.  Could this be an option many have been looking for, giving an edge with leading CAD and DCC applications.  

Taking a step back and looking at what the baseline bread and butter optimised systems Tier 1, Tier 2's S.I.'s and VAR's sell directly into studios and the like.   This new card promises to deliver much more and most importantly at similar pricing.  The more than double the amount of Stream Processors which is a mammoth leap and will enable many to utilise their already optimised software to greater performance levels.  Helping this along double the increase in memory bandwidth and that all important step up to 1GB of onboard memory of the much faster GDDR5.  Therefore pulling out all the stops from the usual professional applications and benchmarks we gave the ATI® FirePro™ V5800 a good airing to see how it really did perform.

Before we move onwards what is the increase that the ATI® FirePro™ V5800 has over its predecessor the ATI® FirePro™ V5700.  In order to see at a glance we put together a table of differences between the 2 cards

ATI® FirePro™ V5800 has only been out in the wild now for several months and there has been a fair amount of coverage on it especially with the market place it is aimed at.  Therefore with us being acquainted with the rudimentary basics of the card we  move onwards to the features and benefits,  and most importantly just how does this enchanted little black and red beastie perform.

With the aid of ATI’s public relations team we therefore find the following

The ATI FirePro™ V5800 is ideally suited for professionals who work with a broad range of applications, medium to large data sets and advanced visual effects.   The ATI FirePro™ V5800 features three independent video outputs3 (two DisplayPort and one dual-link DVI) with ATI Eyefinity technology1 and less than 75W max board power in a single slot.

Bring your design to life through a superior visual experience for up to three displays with ATI Eyefinity technology.   More than double the computational power of previous-generation products

Highlights
•Outstanding performance for the 3D mid-range segment
•2.5X computing capability over prior generation2
•Support both dual-link DVI and DisplayPort connectivity3
•ATI Eyefinity capable graphics card1
•Drive up to 3 independent 30” displays3 — 12.3 million pixels4
•1GB GDDR5 memory
•High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering with 8-bit, 10-bit, and 16-bit per RGB colour component support
•Scalable ultra-parallel processing architecture with 800 stream processors
•AutoDetect technology instinctively optimizes performance for multi-application workflow
•Hardware acceleration and support for advanced features of DirectX® 11 & OpenGL® (up to and including OpenGL® 4.1)
•Optimized and certified for many major CAD and DCC applications
•PCI Express® 2.1 compliant

ATI Eyefinity Technology.    Advanced multi-display technology delivering highly immersive graphics/computing experience with innovative display capabilities supporting massive desktop workspaces3, 1

AutoDetect Technology.   As a user moves between applications, or opens new ones, the graphics driver settings are automatically configured for optimized performance

Full 30-bit Display Pipeline.   Enables more colour values than 24-bit products for more accurate colour reproduction and superior visual fidelity5

Multi-View Display.   With two DisplayPort and one dual-link DVI outputs, Multi-View enables up to three displays with independent display resolution, refresh rate, and display rotation settings 3,1

Full Shader Model 5.0 Support.   Create more complex geometry and scenes without taxing the CPU

Certification.   There is a high level of assurance when purchasing a configuration that is reliable and provides the performance necessary for professional 3D graphics needs

DirectX® 11 and OpenGL® 4.1 Advanced Features

Great performance, scalability and reliability

OpenCL™ 1.1

Industry standard API - Open, multiplatform development platform for enabling broad adoption of heterogeneous computing

The next page shows a few pictures of the card in the flesh and into place on the system

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - V5800 Pictures
Page 3 - System Build and Software Used
Page 4 - SiSoftware Sandra 2011 Video Card Tests
Page 5 - Cinebench 11.5 64-bit, Bentley MicroStation and Redway Turbine Benchmarks
Page 6 - SPECviewperf® 11.0 64-bit, SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™, SPECapc^SM for Maya 2009 and SPECapc ^SM for 3ds Max 9 ^TM
Page 7 - Conclusions and Award