ATI remembers the professionals

FIRST IT WAS the Radeon HD 4870 X2 for the top-of-the range enthusiasts with money to burn, then came the HD 4600 series for the more economically minded, and now ATI has launched a pair of new Firepro cards for 3D professionals.

The new additions to the Firepro range include the V8700, which is aimed at ultra high-end professionals, and the V3750 which is for more entry-level 3D users.

These are added to the V5700 and V3700 which the company launched just last month.

Janet Matsuda, senior director of AMD Professional Graphics reckons that, " Creative professionals requiring realistic lighting and shading of complex models and objects will see the difference with the powerful ATI Firepro V8700 graphics accelerator."

Both cards will feature two Displayport connectors and a Dual-Link DVI-I display output.

The V8700 will sell for around $1,500, a fairly hefty price tag, but for those who work with large models and shader-intensive applications and need a large frame buffer for complex and large data sets, the 30-bit display, 800 shaders, and 1GB of GDDR5 memory on a PCI Express 2.0x16 bus interface will come in handy.

For those whose pockets aren't as deep and don't require the powerhouse specifications of its big brother, the V3750 should go for a much more modest $200 and will pack on 256MB of GDDR3 memory with 320 shaders.

Both are expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2008. µ