AMD Pursues Fusion With FirePro
Like other products in the FirePro line, the V9800 is aimed at digital content creators, computer-aided designers and visualization specialists. But AMD is also targeting other users, and the presence of six Mini DisplayPort outputs helps increase productivity in a variety of work environments.
For example, with up to 24 synchronized outputs on a single machine, and advances in resolution and density of display, the FirePro V9800 could provide new opportunities for engineering collaboration.
AMD says the FirePro V9800 delivers a 1.25x increase in compute stream processor performance, as well as an increase of 2.27x in single- and double-precision performance. Support for OpenCL, DirectCompute, and DirectX 11 is also built in.
Along with performance advancements, the FirePro V9800 comes with 4GB GDDR5 memory, with which AMD hopes to attract customers in industries with high volumes of data, including oil and gas and medical imaging technology.
"The ATI FirePro V9800 will be the professional graphics solution of choice," said Janet Matsuda, senior director of professional graphics at AMD, in a statement. AMD is demonstrating the new FirePro card at the IBC 2010 conference in Amsterdam, which runs from Sept. 10-14. The estimated retail price for the V9800 is $3,499.
AMD last month said it plans to retire the 25-year-old ATI brand as it moves toward its long-awaited goal of achieving Fusion, the chipmaker's code-name for the integration of CPU and GPU on a single piece of silicon.