We have in store within this article many new things to be first seen.   We have given each new product a page then combining all the items into various systems seen in various forms displayed already on this site.  Therefore this is an article not for the faint hearted as much is to be covered, though to ensure you are not side streamed easily we displayed the most pertinent results in each sector.  Thus giving you a good indictor on what to expect at a later date when each is displayed individually.

Time has marched on for these last few months and each step of the way life just gets more exciting and interesting for the professional high-end graphic card user.  Whether it be new hardware to support their current cards, or new professional graphic cards to upgrade from the previous era. 
 
For substantial time NVIDIA's Quadro FX4800 has maintained the wealth as being one of the biggest cards on the market supporting a full 1.5GB of DDR3 memory and when hooked up into SLI mode we see a huge real-estate of 3GB's worth of frame buffer to play with. 
 
Well not any longer.   The busy people over at ATI have now equalled and bettered NVIDIA's offering.   Not only in memory size but that of the vogue faster DDR5 memory pushing higher clock speeds bringing with it an enormous 147.2GB/s bandwidth.

Therefore the key features of this colossal turbo-charged multi functional card are;

·         Industry’s most powerful workstation graphics  that supports up to four independent displays

·         Professional quality and performance for the high-end market

·         2X computing capability over prior generation

·         ATI Eyefinity capable graphics card

·         Four DisplayPort outputs

·         Drive up to 4 independent 30” display – 16.4 million pixels

·         2GB GDDR5 memory with a 256-bit memory interface

·         Scalable ultra parallel processing architecture with 1600 stream processors

·         AutoDetect technology instinctively optimizes performance for multi-application workflow

·         Hardware acceleration of DirectX®11 & OpenGL® 3.2 advanced features

·         Optimized and certified for many major CAD and DCC applications

·         Features industry’s highest memory bandwidth of 147.2GB/s

·         True 30-bit display pipeline (10-bit per RGB) Requires 30-bit monitor for  true 30-bit colour display

·         ATI CrossFire™ Pro Support

·         ATI FirePro™ S400 Support

·          Stream Computing Support

·         One Stereo Sync Output

·         Synchronization Module Support (for Framelock/Genlock)

·         API/Feature; DirectX® 11.0, OpenGL® 3.2, Shader Model 5.0

Operating System for Microsoft® Windows® 7, Windows® XP, Windows Vista®, Linux® 14 (32-bit or 64-bit)

Looking at the increase in options this truly is a multi functional professional card which must have many of you reeling with
 its potential.   Therefore we next look at the official line from ATI (our thanks to their marketing department for the
 information listed below)

Introducing the ATI FirePro™ V8800 workstations graphics card from AMD. This high-end workstation solution features ATI Eyefinity technology, 2GB of ultra high speed GDDR5 memory and more than double the computational power of previous-generation products.   With its large frame buffer and a full 30-bit display pipeline3, the ATI FirePro™ V8800 is ideally suited for users who work with large data sets or shader-intensive applications and who demand high-end computational power and the superior visual flexibility.   Based on a new generation GPU with 1600 stream processors, the ATI FirePro™ V8800 ultra parallel processing architecture helps maximize throughput by automatically directing graphics horsepower where it’s needed.    Intelligent management of computational resources enables enhanced utilization of the GPU to enable real-time rendering of extremely complex models and scenes.

The ATI FirePro™ V8800 features four DisplayPort outputs driven by ATI Eyefinity technology, offering an unprecedented multitude of and flexibility for display configurations for the professional user.4 These include,  from a single graphics card: presenting a multi-monitor desktop of over 10,000 pixels wide5; driving a 4K projector; delivering combinations of portrait and landscape orientations; driving virtual prototyping and video wall scenarios  with multiple projectors. With ATI FirePro graphics native multi-card support, users can see more and do more using up to eight displays being driven by two  ATI FirePro™ V8800 cards in the same workstation. ATI FirePro™ professional graphics cards are thoroughly tested and certified with many major Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Digital Content Creation (DCC) applications, ensuring a level of reliability and compatibility not found in consumer graphics products.

Innovation and Reliability from a Technology Leader

Besides the new and ground breaking ATI Eyefinity technology1, ATI FirePro™ cards have been engineered to deliver innovation and reliability for a wide range of professional operating environments, including Microsoft® Windows® 7, 
Windows® XP, Windows Vista® and Linux®.   The unified driver, which supports all ATI FirePro™ products, helps reduce the total cost of ownership by simplifying installation, deployment and maintenance.     In addition, ATI FirePro™ products incorporate a unique AutoDetect technology. As users open new 3D  applications, or move between them,  ATI FirePro™ graphics driver settings are automatically configured for optimized performance of supported applications, no matter what the user’s workflow demands.

Not stopping there, we also now have the luxury of the new CrossFire™ Pro Technology.  Simply put; the dominance from NVIDIA has well gone.  We now have complete and utter choice.   As long as the mainboard supports CrossFire™ Technology there should be no reason for the mainboard not to uptake CrossFire™ Pro Technology.   We have verified many mainboards here that do support this technology though as a simple precaution its worth a quick check with your supplier to ensure the your chosen mainboard has the capability.

The new ATI FirePro™ V8800 offers exceptional real-application performance for the GPU bound applications
 like Maya, 3ds Max, and UG NX4 with the applications taking better advantage of the Shader processing and much larger memory bandwidth.  This in turn means have a significant increase in performance.

Therefore with the introduction to the new ATI FirePro™ V8800 complete we move onwards to our next offering.  Intel's new Westmere Xeon on Page 2

Page 1 - Introduction The ATI FirePro™ V8800 3D Workstation Graphics Accelerator
Page 2 - The new X5680 3.33GHz Intel® Xeon® Processor
Page 3 - The New Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 256GB SSD
Page 4 - System's Set-Up and Software Used
Page 5 - Sandra 2010 and POVRAY on Westmere
Page 6 - WD 256GB SiliconEdge Blue SSD
Page 7 - Westmere - HyperThreading Switched Off
Page 8 - ATI FirePro™ V8800 and Gulftown
Page 9 - ATI FirePro™ V8800 and a Single 3.33GHz Intel® Xeon® W5590 Nehalem EP® System
Page 10 - ATI FirePro™ V8800 and a Dual 3.33GHz Intel® Xeon® X5680 Nehalem EP® (aka Westmere) System
Page 11 - SPECviewperf® 10.0 64-bit The ATI FirePro™ V8750 v The ATI FirePro™ V8800
Page 12 - Conclusions and Awards