Diamond planning HD 2900 XT-based 2GB VFX 2000 pro GPU?

Diamond is no stranger to packin' an awful lot of RAM onto graphics cards, and apparently, the forthcoming VFX 2000 Series Professional Workstation GPU will keep the legacy alive. According to Hot Hardware, Diamond is readying a 2GB (of GDDR4 memory, no less) professional card based on the R600 (now known as the HD 2900 XT), and reportedly, "the card's PCB has been modified from the standard HD 2900 XT reference design to support the workstation-class features inherent to the FireGL line of professional graphics cards." Still, there's no word yet on what frequencies the GPU and RAM will hum along at, but word on the street has this beast launching "in the coming weeks." Click on for another glimpse.

[coolant8 @ Sep 1st 2007 9:52AM]

SWEET

[Dave @ Sep 1st 2007 10:22AM]

OMG

[Rod Munch @ Sep 1st 2007 10:44AM]

HAWT

[Chris @ Sep 1st 2007 10:53AM]

But will it play Doom. LOL.

[Thijs Haenen @ Sep 2nd 2007 11:16AM]

Oh, and how...

[coolant8 @ Sep 1st 2007 11:40AM]

WILL you STOP with the doom question, its really not original or funny any more. It will play doom, though as it's in the professional fireGL series, it's suppose to be used for Extreme high end OpenGL rendering, not that much focused on DirectX apps, so gaming on it will not quite as impressive, this card is made for Doing, not for Gaming.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Sep 1st 2007 1:26PM]

@coolant8

Doom I & II ran on DOS and DOOM III ran on OpenGL, All three iterations had zero involvement with DX; so yes It would run DOOM. But let me ask you this: Why play DOOM when you can Play Counter Strike, Will it run CS?

[Jake @ Sep 1st 2007 12:09PM]

Thats a nice looking assembly. Is that a water cooled unit, or just fan cooled? Anybody hear any whisperings on a price yet?

[Dan @ Sep 1st 2007 12:19PM]

That's only a fan. :)

[Jake @ Sep 1st 2007 12:26PM]

Oh well. A guy can dream (or modify :)

[coolant8 @ Sep 1st 2007 12:24PM]

1 GB version of the 2900xt based ATi 1Gb FireGL V7350 PCI-Express Card costs like £859.95 GBP, with 2 gb? probably upwards 1000 GBP.

[coolant8 @ Sep 1st 2007 12:26PM]

ATi 1Gb FireGL V7350 Card costs like £859.95 GBP with out tax, £1,010.44 inc.VAT, if this is like the FireGL V7350, but with extra ram, it will be more expensive.

[coolant8 @ Sep 1st 2007 12:29PM]

Neither ways, nVidia's Quadro FX5600 with 1.5 GB of ram will still outclass this the same way as 8800 series outclassed 2900XT

[gescom @ Sep 2nd 2007 5:46AM]

"nVidia's Quadro FX5600 with 1.5 GB of ram will still outclass this the same way as 8800 series outclassed 2900XT"

not really necessary. http://www.dailytech.com/ATI+Radeon+HD+2900+XT+Performance+Benchmarks/article7043.htm,
well it seems Firegl version will be much faster than Quadro.

[Mikeo @ Sep 2nd 2007 7:01AM]

You are truely clueless.

With a new upcoming driver for a 2600XT FireGL card can reach the last-gen Quadro 5500.

And this is a 2900XT, with 4 times the memory bandwidth (512-bit) and 320 stream procs. (2.5 times of 2600XTs)


IIRC the 5600 doesn't have a 2x lead over the 5500 = FRIED.
Doesn't help that the 5600/4600 have only 384-bit busses and less raw computational power than the 2900- bottlenecks found in gaming benchmarks (that marred the 2900) don't count here.

[coolant8 @ Sep 2nd 2007 11:53AM]

OH, I'm I...R600 merely merely look good on the spec sheet, in actuality, R600 does not bypass 640MB version of 8800 GTS with its 512 bit bandwidth in contrast to 384, 512 bit counts for nothing if the actual GPU architecture is inefficient. beside, on your spec sheet, if you up the res, add in filters, R600's raw power vanishes.

[coolant8 @ Sep 2nd 2007 11:57AM]

http://www.mvktech.net/content/view/3701/38/

[coolant8 @ Sep 2nd 2007 12:12PM]

ATi's professional drivers have always been inferior, FX5600 has already been out for alot longer than 2900, with much more refined performance, AS DirectX 10 brings on unified shader architecture, who says that G80's raw performance can't be serval times faster than G71?

[Mikeo @ Sep 2nd 2007 12:33PM]

On top of your "never exceeding 640MB GTS" is bullshit.
In gaming, yes; professional apps, nein.

SpecView relies heavily on raw computational power and bandwidth, 2 traits where 2900XT in GDDR3 already wins the 8800GTS/Quadro 5600.

As for efficiency, since there is no MSAA involved (only line AA) 2900XT takes none of the performance hit it has in games where it's forced to do shader MSAA- even in games, without MSAA you can see the 2900XT approaching the 8800GTX.

With the wider pipe, more power and AMD getting their drivers right (they already have) the FireGL of this generation is actually returning the favor from Quadros.

[coolant8 @ Sep 2nd 2007 12:49PM]

Approaching the 8800GTX, maybe, not beating it.

[Rejus @ Sep 2nd 2007 2:09PM]

you run this card on your 32bit vista with 4gb of RAM and all of the sudden you have less than 2GB ram left b/c windows has to address remaining 2gb for the video card plus other small things.
so for designer or cad professional less than 2gb available memory is not enough. maybe with x64 windows this card will be good but still many apps dont run on x64 windows (installers for apps themselves especially)
again i might be wrong about all this

[cmdwedge @ Sep 2nd 2007 8:11PM]

I'm just excited to see the Diamond name on a graphics product again! Huzzah!

Now make a replacement for the Diamond Monster Sound. :)