Exclusive - Introducing  ATI FirePro™ V9800 Professional Graphics Card

Over these last 6 months we have exclusively looked into some of the worlds most astounding technical accomplishments in the professional graphics market place from both ATI and Nvidia.  Each card has its own merits and place, depending upon the end-users budget.

We have completed the new Quadro Fermi range from Nvidia - quite something else to say the least.  Finally the last in this series from ATI, the new mighty 4GB FirePro V9800 hits the beach.  Naughty, naughty, beach.   This is a very interesting configured professional workstation graphics card which will catch many by surprise upon its cost and performance - most important its actual versatility.

We looked at the FirePro V8800 on its launch back in April and it took everyone by shock at its performance and capabilities making it one of the most powerful cards on the market place from ATI.    After a further 6 months careful research and development today we delve into the new FirePro V9800 and see what it has to offer.  Seed cards have been over these last 2 months have been used by many key influential companies to mark its performance and the case studies reports have been promising as we see from these 2 quotes;

“The ability to drive six display outputs simultaneously and achieve such a large image on a very high resolution display is a great step forward for engineering collaboration. Sharing a 3D model at full scale and achieving a significant cost reduction at the same time sounds like a dream, yet it is a reality. It is clear that the ATI FirePro™ V9800 professional graphics card has delivered the high level of technology that Dassault Systèmes has come to expect.” Jerome Maillot, Senior Manager Dassault Systèmes

“On board GPU memory is critical and this is just one area where the V9800 scores. Studios need high quality high resolution textures to be able to get cinematic quality results and with the 4 GB V9800 this will be much faster and much easier.” Yoni Koenig, Chief Scientist, Studio GPU

The most significant advancement of the ATI FirePro V9800 is that of the multi display support.  Up to 6 monitors can be supported up to a resolution of Maximum Resolution of 2560x1600 @ 60Hz.   This means a dramatic increase in display density and visualization capability for markets from medical imaging to DCC, CAD and digital signage.  (More information click on the URL)

Before we move any further ahead with the article lets have a swift preview of some more information from ATI's Public Relations department on the new FirePro V9800.

The ATI FirePro™ V9800 is the most advanced ATI FirePro™ professional graphics solution ever created by AMD. Suited for professionals who work with the largest data sets and the most intensive 3D environments, the ATI FirePro™ V9800 delivers the ultimate in computational power and performance.

Supported by a massive 4GB memory capacity and 1600 stream processors, the ATI FirePro™ V9800 also offers unparalleled productivity innovation with ATI Eyefinity support for up to six independent displays from a single graphics card, ensuring that your creativity is never inhibited by a lack of work space.

ATI Eyefinity Technology   Industry-leading multi-display technology enabling a highly immersive and unrivalled graphics/computing experience across up to six simultaneous and independent displays from a single ATI FirePro™ V9800 graphics card.

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 fidelity.

Full Shader Model 5.0 Support   Helps create highly complex geometry and scenes without taxing the CPU.

Certification   Ensure compatibility, reliability and the highest level of performance when used with professional 3D software packages.

DirectX^® 11 and OpenGL^® 4.0 Advanced Features   Enables optimal performance in leading applications.

OpenCL™ 1.0   Industry standard API – Open, multiplatform development platform to help enable broad adoption of heterogeneous computing.

3D Stereoscopic Support   Effortlessly work in stereo with support for 3-pin active sync stereoscopic glasses.

Framelock/Genlock support   For smooth multi-display visualization.

Therefore taking this into consideration lets take a swift look at the variances within the features table between the FirePro V9800 and FirePro V8750 cards to gain some idea of the comparisons and how much of a technology leap has gone into the card.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Supported Platforms

Microsoft Windows 7 (64-bit and 32-bit)
Microsoft Windows Vista (64-bit and 32-bit)
Microsoft Windows XP (64-bit and 32-bit)
Linux® - Full OpenGL implementation (64-bit and 32-bit)

Its a great new day in the life for ATI in the professional graphic's market, as they have not only shifted into top gear, but taken a whole new lease of life with the power injection of the new ATI FirePro®  V9800.     The R & D department at ATI have now totally surpassed themselves with what we are about to see.  We all thought that the ATI FirePro V8800 was something to behold, but this really is something of very special from ATI.

For 6 months the ATI FirePro V8800 has maintained the wealth as being one of the most popular ultra high-end professional graphic's cards to be found within the professional market.    Not anymore as the ATI FirePro V9800 will be having many readers licking their lips at just what has taken over.  With all the basic facts in place we now get down to the meat and veg of the article.

Next page now for a few pictures of the card in the flesh

Page 1 - ATI FirePro V9800 Introduction
Page 2 - ATI FirePro V9800 Professional Graphic Card Pictures
Page 3 - Introducing "Machine Gun Joe"
Page 4 - System Set-Up and Software Used
Page 5 - SiSoftware Sandra 2010 Tests on System
Page 6 -  SiSoftware Sandra 2010 Tests on the ATI FirePro V9800
Page 7 - Bentley MicroStation and POVRAY 3.7 beta 38 (64-bit)Benchmark
Page 8 - Redway Turbine Benchmark and Cinebench 11.5
Page 9 - SPECapc ^SM for 3ds Max 9 ^TM  and SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
Page 10 - SPECapc^SM for Maya 2009
Page 11 - SPECviewperf® 11.0 64-bit
Page 12 - Conclusions and Award