Siggraph

AMD has struggled over the past year with production and marketing snafus, and some worried that the well-regarded ATI FireGL series cards would be in trouble. After all, AMD, which spent $5.4 billion to buy graphics card maker ATI last year, had long-time ATI CEO Dave Orton leave the combined company this past month. (While some speculated that there were problems over the buyout, Orton has only said that he was tired of the long-distance commute from his Ontario home.)

No need to worry, it seems. At the show, AMD announced five new ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators, ranging from the $299 ATI FireGL V3600 to the first card to support 2GB of RAM, the top-of-the-line $2799 ATI FireGL V8650.

A new unified shader architecture optimizes performance, keeping the board‘s various processor units (vertex, pixel, and geometry) full to the brim and working flat out. Combined with DirectX 10- and OpenGL 2.1, demos of the cards show that users of apps like Autodesk Maya and Softimage XSI can expect significant speed boosts. (Watch for upcoming release of OpenGL 3 for added processing potency.)

Unique aspects of the FireGL series include the only support for dual monitor, 10-bit video, says product manager Rob Jamison. Jamison also made mention that the ATI division isn’t AMD-centric, but will be fully supporting Intel-based workstations, along with a new Linux initiative.