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AMD is set to release a super workstation driver
GRAPHICS CHIP DESIGNER AMD is planning to release a 'super driver' for its Firepro workstation graphics cards.
The software driver update, which comes barely four months after the firm launched its latest Firepro cards, will bring a 61 per cent speedup to the entry level FirePro V3800 with the high-end V8800 seeing a 81 per cent performance increase, according to AMD.
That headline 81 per cent figure is for the Lightwave subset of the SPECviewperf benchmark, though the company reports impressive performance gains in 3D Studio Max, Lightwave and Catia subsets as well.
AMD also boasts that in the past four months it has managed to certify a further 50 applications for use with its Firepro cards. That increase brings the total to more than 90. Typically application certification is what sells workstation graphics boards, rather than performance claims.
Apparently the mix of driver releases and application certifications provides "the right combination of application performance, reliability and feature support for today's professional needs." Also it provides a good excuse to charge about five times more for essentially the same hardware as desktop graphics cards.
AMD said that it will release the beta drivers "in the coming days", however users will be hoping to find out when the super drivers will emerge out of beta and into production status. µ
Tags: Amd
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It is amazing how much of the pro drivers rely on the host CPU. I’ve seen several benchmarks where the test result is within 2% across several cards within the same generation or even similar to previous generation. The performance does vary greatly if the task is more like a 3D game not just a wireframe. It still leaves a lot of potential improvements.
The extra work to add the app accelerators/OpenGL and certify compatibility with pro apps is added to the price of the pro cards. That way they can reduce the cost to average consumers who do not use the pro software and recoup costs from the pro users.