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ATI launches FirePro V9800

by Pete Mason on 9 September 2010, 15:11

Tags: ATI Eyefinity, AMD (NYSE:AMD), ATi Technologies (NYSE:AMD)

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AMD's top-of-the-line professional graphics-card - the FirePro V8800 - packed a lot of processing power, but was left strangely lacking in terms of outputs.  Despite its 2GB of memory, the card was only given four DisplayPort connectors, leaving the workstation-crowd without a single-card solution to power a six-monitor Eyefinity set-up.

The manufacturer is righting this wrong, though, with the launch of the V9800.  The frame-buffer has been doubled-up to 4GB and the card can now drive a full-complement of six monitors simultaneously. 

Other than needing a 6-pin and an 8-pin power connector - as opposed to two six-pin connectors - the card is largely the same as the V8800, which in turn is essentially a consumer Radeon HD 5870.  This means that you'll get 1600 stream-processors clocked at 850MHz, while the GDDR5 is set to an effective 4,800MHz.

You'll obviously find support for DirectX 11, OpenCL and DirectCompute as well as a full 30-bit display pipeline for more accurate colour-reproduction.

To make building an Eyefinity set-up a little easier, AMD has also chosen to include one dual-link and five single-link active Mini DisplayPort-to-DVI adapters with the card.  However, at the price, you'd expect an extra or two.  The FirePro V9800 is set to retail for a whopping $3,499 (£2,729 including VAT) - more than twice the $1,499 MSRP of the V8800.

Considering that the performance improvements are expected to be marginal, AMD clearly puts quite the premium on 6-way Eyefinity support.  For those interested, the company's new flagship professional video-card should be available soon.



HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

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What makes these cards so much more expensive in relation to the standard retail parts?, other than more memory.
Platinum
What makes these cards so much more expensive in relation to the standard retail parts?, other than more memory.


Seconded, what is the actual difference?
Platinum
What makes these cards so much more expensive in relation to the standard retail parts?, other than more memory.

Not a great deal, as far as I know.

The frame buffers are usually larger, but that obviously doesn't justify the price tag. You also have the 3-pin DIN port, though I'm not sure what that's actually for.

Otherwise, most of the differences are in the drivers. FirePro cards are optimised for pixel perfect accuracy and tuned to work exceptionally well with a very limited set of software products (CAD, etc). Apparently, you can perform a pretty good soft-mod on a Radeon card and turn it into the corresponding FirePro model, but I've never tried it myself.

In short, you're paying for very good driver support.
ATi logo …. yaaaaaaaay!
Isnt the 3Pin DIN an external power supply ?