AMD 100-505516 Leaflet

096 | 3D WORLD

3D WORLD February 2008

t has been 18 months

since AMD launched a new

ATI FireGL. In the interim,

its consumer graphics

chips have gone through several

generations, including a major

architectural change. But now

AMD is bringing its FireGLs bang

up to date: its new cards are

based on its R600 chips, which arrived

in consumer cards some six months ago.

Until the end of 2006, GPUs had used

two distinct types of shading sub-unit: one

aimed at processing vertex information, the

other at texturing pixels. But when Nvidia

launched its 8000-series cards around this

time last year, a uniﬁ ed shading approach

arrived on desktop PCs. Instead of separate

dedicated units, many general-purpose

units are now used..

Nvidia soon reworked this technology

for its professional 3D accelerators, the

Quadro FX 4600 and 5600 (Reviews, issue

94). Now AMD has followed suit, bringing

its R600 technology across to its FireGL

product line. The FireGL 2007 Series has

ﬁ ve members. The V8650 sits at the top

with a whopping 2GB of frame buffer, and

the V3600 challenges the low end with

just 256MB. In the middle is the V7600.

Like the new top-end FireGL V8600

and V8650 (and the consumer Radeon HD

2900XT), the FireGL V7600 is powered by

320 stream processors. However, it has

lost the 512-bit memory controller of the

premium cards, so has less than half the

bandwidth – 51GB/sec versus 108GB/sec.

It also only has 512MB of GDDR4 memory,

which puts it in the mid-range these days.

It’s one of the fastest professional 3D accelerators around, yet it costs a lot less
than its predecessors in the FireGL range

BY JAMES MORRIS

ATI FireGL V7600

DETAILS

PRICE

• £499 / $999 / €625*
*Currency conversion
All prices are MSRPs, exc. VAT

PLATFORM

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM

PC
• Windows XP / Vista
• PCI Express

MAIN FEATURES

• 512MB GDDR4 memory
• 2 x Dual-Link DVI

connections

• Component analog output
• DirectX 10 support
• OpenGL 2.1
• HDR rendering up to 16-bit

per RGB colour component

MANUFACTURER

AMD

WEBSITE

http://ati.amd.com

RELATED
PRODUCTS

• ATI FireGL V8600

Not reviewed:

visit http://ati.amd.com

• Nvidia Quadro FX 4600

Reviewed: Issue 94

VERDICT

PROS

• Signiﬁ cant performance

improvement

• Lower price than FireGL V7300
• At least as fast as Quadro FX

4600 in most areas

CONS

• Nothing signiﬁ cant

SPECIFICATIONS 9

VALUE FOR MONEY

OVERALL 10

REVIEWS |

ATI FireGL V7600

All of the new FireGLs support DirectX 10,

though, whereas none of the previous

models did. This could be a feature which

comes into its own in the future. DirectX

10 exposes the full potential of the uniﬁ ed

shader architecture, and opens up the

possibility of harnessing a card’s power for

GPGPU functions, such as ofﬂ ine 3D

rendering rather than real-time

visualisation. So what does all this mean?

NEW VERSUS OLD

Using a 3.6GHz Pentium 4 workstation,

we’ve placed the FireGL V7600 up against

its 512MB predecessor, the V7300.

Running SPECviewperf 10, the V7600

trounces the V7300 in virtually every test.

It’s almost twice as fast in ensight-03,

nearly 70 per cent quicker running

maya-02 and around 40 per cent faster

with sw-02 (SolidWorks). It also offers more

than twice the performance with tcvis-01

and ugnix-01. Only the proe-04, 3dsmax-

04 and catia-02 results show no noticeable

improvement. The V7600’s 3DMark06

score is also about 50 per cent ahead,

showing its improved DirectX abilities.

Looking at issue 94’s graphics card

group test, which used a more powerful

Xeon platform, the V7600’s scores would

easily have placed it in the same ballpark

as Nvidia’s Quadro FX 4600 and 5600.

The best news is that the FireGL V7600

costs £200 less than the V7300. This

means it offers comparable performance

to Nvidia’s Quadro FX 4600 for less than

half the price.

●

MODEL

OVERALL

OPENGL HW-L

3DSMAX-

CATIA-

ENSIGHT-

MAYA-

PROE-

SW-

TCVIS-

UGNX-

MEMORY

BANDWIDTH

CONNECTIONS

SHADER

UNITS

PRICE

ATI FireGL

V7600

5,712.00

3,217.00

21.23

19.60

38.05

141.85

19.38

52.67

18.18

40.97

512MB
GDDR4

51GB/sec

2 x DVI, stereo 3D,
component analog

320 stream

processors

£499

ATI FireGL

V7300

3,880.00

3,171.00

21.98

25.73

20.88

84.92

19.40

38.04

8.00

18.77

512MB
GDDR3

42GB/sec

2 x DVI, stereo 3D,
component analog

8 vector,

16 pixel

£875

3DMARK06

CINEBENCH 9.5

SPECVIEWPERF 10

SPECIFICATIONS

PERFORMANCE COMPARISON

(Higher is better)

●

Running SPECviewperf 10, the V7600 beats

the old V7300 in almost every important test

TDW100.r_firegls 096

12/12/07 09:53:08