Cadalyst - March 2008 - (Page 26)

cadlabsreview ATI FireGL V5600 AMD 408.749.4000 www.ati.amd.com/FireGL Price: $599 The ATI FireGL V5600 is a mid-range graphics card with 512 MB of GDDR4 RAM onboard. The V5600 is a half-length, single-slot graphics card that requires no supplemental power feed and uses less than 75 W of power. Like all of AMD’s ATI FireGL cards, the V5600 is fully tested and certified with major CAD and DCC applications. With 120 shader-processing units and a 128-bit ring bus memory controller interface, the ATI FireGL V5600 offers full Shader Model 4 support and HDR rendering capabilities. With a memory bandwidth of 35 GB/second, the ATI FireGL V5600 has more than double the bandwidth of the ATI FireGL V3600. The V5600 supports 8-, 10-, and 16-bit per pixel color component output and offers hardware-accelerated DirectX 10 and OpenGL 2.1. The ATI FireGL V5600 has two DVI-I output connectors, each of which provides dual-link capabilities. The ATI FireGL V5600 sailed through the Cadalyst benchmark series without any difficulties whatsoever. I tested the V5600 with AutoCAD 2008 using the new Cadalyst C2008 benchmark with both the OpenGL and Direct3D AutoCAD drivers. With the native OpenGL drivers, the V5600 produced at C2008 total index score of 202; with the Direct3D drivers, I got a score of 262, which was a good jump in performance. Then I tested two concurrently running sessions of AutoCAD 2008 with the Cadalyst C2008 benchmark using the native AutoCAD Direct3D drivers. The combined total index score of the two sessions was 519. These two concurrent sessions were completed in 81 minutes, compared with the single Direct3D session, which required 79 minutes. 26 March 2008 | cadalyst | www.cadalyst.com After the AutoCAD tests were completed, I turned to Autodesk 3ds Max 2008 and ran the MAXBench4 benchmark in two configurations — one series with Max’s native OpenGL drivers and another with the native Direct3D drivers. With the Autodesk 3ds Max OpenGL drivers selected, the combined high/low average for the ATI FireGL V5600 was 102.52. With Max’s Direct3D driver selected, the combined high/low average jumped to 194.09. Finally, I performed the full SPECviewperf 10 benchmark, which produced the following scores: 30.24 for 3dsmax-04, 38.39 for catia-02, 36.24 for ensight-03, 168.35 for maya-02, 36.41 for proe-04, 84.28 for sw-01, 29.01 for tcvis-01, and 30.40 for ugnx-01. The ATI FireGL V5600 should prove to be a popular mid-range graphics card, as it offers an excellent set of features at a modest price. Highly Recommended. ATI FireGL V7600 AMD 408.749.4000 www.ati.amd.com/FireGL Price: $999 The ATI FireGL V7600 differs from the two other graphics cards in this article in several ways. Considered a fullfeatured graphics cards, the V7600 incorporates 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM in a double-width, half-length card that is the only one of the three in this combined review to require a supplemental power connector — although it uses less than 150 W of power in operation. With a memory bandwidth of 51 GB/second and 320 shaderprocessing units with a 256-bit ring bus memory controller interface, the V7600 is a graphics card designed for serious work. The V7600 supports Shader Model 4. http://www.cvis.com/go/c67 http://www.ati.amd.com/FireGL http://www.ati.amd.com/FireGL http://www.cvis.com/go/c67 http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - March 2008

Cadalyst - March 2008 Contents Editor's Window CAD Central Thicker than Water Safe Keeping — Backup Software Secures Your Designs AMD’s ATI FireGL Graphics Cards AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 — Surveying, Civil Engineering, and Land Development Software Cool Software Utilities for Your Job History, Nonhistory, or Both? In the Eye of the Storm Builders’ Information Modeling CAD Cartoon Issue Indexes CAD from the Streets

Cadalyst - March 2008

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