Earlier this month, AMD popped out a 512MB ATI FirePro 2450 quad-display card, but if that's just not pro enough for your professional needs, have a gander at the company's FirePro V7750. Sporting 1GB of GDDR3 frame-buffer memory, a 30-bit display pipeline and twin DisplayPort connectors + one dual-link DVI socket, this workstation powerhouse also features High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering with 8-bit, 10-bit and 16-bit-per-RGB color component support. You'll also get 320 stream processing units, full Shader Model 4.1 support for vertex and pixel shaders and a unified video decoder for H.264, AVC, VC-1 and MPEG-2 video formats. Show your CAD who's boss for just $899.
Either that's a ridiculously good price or the card is overhyped. I've paid that for a used FX4000 that was 2 years old, back in the day. This would be like having 3 of those in 1 card for the same price. However, I think I've learned my lesson after Fire GL and Quadro FX purchases... I will likely stick with a consumer card such as hte 4870 for my next workstation.
If you do a lot of CAD this is great, but this is by no means a gaming card it has a different purpose. I am confused at the choice of GDDR3 and not GDDR5 kind of odd.
Yes, I know, but thanks for pointing it out. I'm an architect so I do use CAD. I also don't play games except for flight sims on a PS3 console. But a high end game card often works very well in a CAD setting. Memory-wise, cost savings I suppose. Look at the price.
Yeah, when CAD actually needs the power of a workstation card it generally means you could be doing your modeling elsewhere, more easily. My 8800 works lovely for my CAD needs. Intense 3D modeling, I use a workstation.
yeah apple need to get there act together in supporting high end gfx cards, and also any "new" gfx cards, to wait over a year before allowing only 1 new card to be used is crazy..... the mac pro needs this sort of card to be an option, not just a quite fast mid range gaming card
it cant be hard apple, and i am sure that you lose many 3d animators for it
Weren't the past FirePro cards essentially the consumer level gaming cards with a few bits flipped in the card's bios or in the drivers? What really sets this apart from the gaming cards?
yes.. you could upgrade the bios of a high-end gaming card and maybe it might perform like a high-end pro card the difference is that for these cards ussually the best chips are picked to produce them. So from the outside it may look the same but from the inside there are ussually more pipelines and other magic tricks. Consider for example hardware Z-buffers for one. Besides the nice bios you also need the proper drivers for support to make these things work. Put that together and the fact that an engineer doesnt bother playing with the software but gets paid by the hour are these cards in general cheap. And as stated above, yes an architect who in general works in 2d-space with little polygons a good gaming card would suit them. Yet the serious modelers or constructional engineers who like to see their parts in 3d to see how it fits together benefit from this. To put things in prospective an engineer makes 65 euro per hour and works 200 days a year, which costs a total of around 100.000 euro. If he can only work 2% faster with his card, it´s already a winning situation.
Don't let the hype confuse you. I'm a moderator on a 3ds Max forum, and I know some professionals use gaming cards instead of the professional cards. It's cost benefit, but most people found that the cost differential was high but the gain was not nearly as high. The last workstation I built cost me around $10,000. I don't just use CAD, that workstation was built for Max and it worked great on the machine. Still runs well, but not as fast as the new machines.
I'm going to try out a 4870 before I commit to one of these more costly cards in my next workstation, especially if the performance gain is not as noticable. I could get an SSD in PCIe with the change. As you suggest, it's possible a solids modelers would benefit, such as users of SolidWorks or something, but a ton of people went the pro card route and found they were disappointed. Just so you know...
Hey Alex... What part of "THIS-IS-JUST-A-FRIGGEN-BLOG-COMMENT" do you not understand? Take it easy dude... anyways i'm still waiting for the day I can run Pro-E + 3Dstudio Max from OSX off a remote server alla OnLive.com....
There seems to be a real lack of understanding graphics cards by readers here. These types of cards are used for producing professional content. These cards really shine when using 3D modeling software such as Maya, 3Ds Max, Autocad and others. These cards are not really designed for gaming.
On another note, I find it humorous that these cards work best in Windows when Macs are considered by some as "graphics" machines.
After working with Vicon, Maya and MotionBuilder for the last 10 years using these types of cards, I can honestly say that if you want to produce professional 3D content, you need to use Windows (you can use linux/unix in some situations). I have never ever had to ask the question "Does this work on Windows?" I already know the answer -- it works and it works very nicely on high end hardware :)
at one time, Apple offered high end professional graphics in the Mac Pro. Now that's all gone with the newest one, which means the Mac "Pro" is anything but. And the lack of Blu Ray only adds insult to injury.
in 2 years you can get this card for a mac...and they will compare it to the already grossly outdated "highest" end card and be like THIS ONE GIVES 35% BETTER PERFORMANCE THEN THE LAST CARD.
And then (2 years from now) they will charge you double for what the card is going for now (present day).
Ya...no crap, a new old card is better then your old old card...but how does it preform to the highest end PC card?
Apple has some shady marketing techniques sometimes....
I would actually rather have an "unstable" mac with the latest and greatest, then buy a year outdated machine at a premium.
woah....i just got myself dizzy with all that time travel
Typically they run the exact same, and they say they are built for 3d modeling apps so they can charge you more for them.
It does have an onboard video codec decoder/encoder...so if the app can take advantage of it...it will go faster. Also many of them have 4 DACs (rather then gaming cards with 2) so you can make an array of 4 monitors.
Ive done plenty of 3d modeling on high end "gaming" graphics cards...they run great. I've also don't 3d modeling on Quattro 3d modeling graphics cards....didn't notice a difference, they both ran good.
I read about this a while back, and from what I can remember the "gaming cards" basically aren't concerned too much about the quality of the output. They are optimized for drawing speed.
The pro line cards can output the same (and often more) number of shapes, but they are more concerned about the quality of the output.
$899??? for that price you could have 2-4870x2 with 2GBs of ram each in CrossFire for a total of 4GBs wouldnt that render faster than one FirePro with 320 streaming processors? 2-4870x2 would equal (1600 (800 x 2) Stream Processing Units per card) 3200 streaming processors! + it would have GDDR5 so it would be a faster rendering system than one of these.
Why can't ATI and Nvidia give dimensions for their products!
A middle-school level tech spec writing class would require dimensions as a bare minimum. It's found nowhere in any data sheets for any products.
It's not like this is top secret info. It's useful only for people wondering whether it fits in their case. In my mind it's indicative of the mindset of these companies - they tell you want they want to say, not what you need to know.
The rule for GPU's seems to be "baffle 'em with bullshit if you can't dazzle 'em with your brilliance."
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posted Mar 27th 2009 7:52AM
Either that's a ridiculously good price or the card is overhyped. I've paid that for a used FX4000 that was 2 years old, back in the day. This would be like having 3 of those in 1 card for the same price. However, I think I've learned my lesson after Fire GL and Quadro FX purchases... I will likely stick with a consumer card such as hte 4870 for my next workstation.
If you do a lot of CAD this is great, but this is by no means a gaming card it has a different purpose. I am confused at the choice of GDDR3 and not GDDR5 kind of odd.
Yes, I know, but thanks for pointing it out. I'm an architect so I do use CAD. I also don't play games except for flight sims on a PS3 console. But a high end game card often works very well in a CAD setting. Memory-wise, cost savings I suppose. Look at the price.
Yeah, when CAD actually needs the power of a workstation card it generally means you could be doing your modeling elsewhere, more easily. My 8800 works lovely for my CAD needs. Intense 3D modeling, I use a workstation.
Not available for the Mac Pro.
Yuk yuk.
What is the point of your post? If you are going to pay more for niche hardware you have to be prepared for incompatibilities.
supertroll
Read the title again.... SERIOUS pixels, not vacation photos of your hooded sweatshirt.
yeah apple need to get there act together in supporting high end gfx cards, and also any "new" gfx cards, to wait over a year before allowing only 1 new card to be used is crazy..... the mac pro needs this sort of card to be an option, not just a quite fast mid range gaming card
it cant be hard apple, and i am sure that you lose many 3d animators for it
i think apple looses most of its 3d animators because industry standard 3d apps run like crap in OSX.
you can go on an on about cinema4d but whatever MAYA is the industry standard, and even my apple fanboi friends avoid using Macs.
I don't think its apple's fault...more like autodesk.
@jakem and Leindurstit
You need to view the internet with your sarcasm glasses on.
@Skeezle
Did I say something wrong? Hmm? Or did your rich ass company buy this card for you?
What part of "THIS-IS-NOT-A-GAMING-CARD" do you not understand?
price is really good because V7350 cost ~1300$ and it is old
GDDR5 would be too much expensive for this card
Weren't the past FirePro cards essentially the consumer level gaming cards with a few bits flipped in the card's bios or in the drivers? What really sets this apart from the gaming cards?
yes.. you could upgrade the bios of a high-end gaming card and maybe it might perform like a high-end pro card the difference is that for these cards ussually the best chips are picked to produce them. So from the outside it may look the same but from the inside there are ussually more pipelines and other magic tricks. Consider for example hardware Z-buffers for one.
Besides the nice bios you also need the proper drivers for support to make these things work. Put that together and the fact that an engineer doesnt bother playing with the software but gets paid by the hour are these cards in general cheap.
And as stated above, yes an architect who in general works in 2d-space with little polygons a good gaming card would suit them. Yet the serious modelers or constructional engineers who like to see their parts in 3d to see how it fits together benefit from this. To put things in prospective an engineer makes 65 euro per hour and works 200 days a year, which costs a total of around 100.000 euro. If he can only work 2% faster with his card, it´s already a winning situation.
Don't let the hype confuse you. I'm a moderator on a 3ds Max forum, and I know some professionals use gaming cards instead of the professional cards. It's cost benefit, but most people found that the cost differential was high but the gain was not nearly as high. The last workstation I built cost me around $10,000. I don't just use CAD, that workstation was built for Max and it worked great on the machine. Still runs well, but not as fast as the new machines.
I'm going to try out a 4870 before I commit to one of these more costly cards in my next workstation, especially if the performance gain is not as noticable. I could get an SSD in PCIe with the change. As you suggest, it's possible a solids modelers would benefit, such as users of SolidWorks or something, but a ton of people went the pro card route and found they were disappointed. Just so you know...
Hey Alex... What part of "THIS-IS-JUST-A-FRIGGEN-BLOG-COMMENT" do you not understand?
Take it easy dude... anyways i'm still waiting for the day I can run Pro-E + 3Dstudio Max from OSX off a remote server alla OnLive.com....
cant you just buy a ATI radeon 4870 X2?
mmm...
good choice~
but firepro is professional edition of 4870X2..i think.
But will it blend?
why dont you buy one and find out :p
There seems to be a real lack of understanding graphics cards by readers here. These types of cards are used for producing professional content. These cards really shine when using 3D modeling software such as Maya, 3Ds Max, Autocad and others. These cards are not really designed for gaming.
On another note, I find it humorous that these cards work best in Windows when Macs are considered by some as "graphics" machines.
After working with Vicon, Maya and MotionBuilder for the last 10 years using these types of cards, I can honestly say that if you want to produce professional 3D content, you need to use Windows (you can use linux/unix in some situations). I have never ever had to ask the question "Does this work on Windows?" I already know the answer -- it works and it works very nicely on high end hardware :)
at one time, Apple offered high end professional graphics in the Mac Pro. Now that's all gone with the newest one, which means the Mac "Pro" is anything but. And the lack of Blu Ray only adds insult to injury.
in 2 years you can get this card for a mac...and they will compare it to the already grossly outdated "highest" end card and be like THIS ONE GIVES 35% BETTER PERFORMANCE THEN THE LAST CARD.
And then (2 years from now) they will charge you double for what the card is going for now (present day).
Ya...no crap, a new old card is better then your old old card...but how does it preform to the highest end PC card?
Apple has some shady marketing techniques sometimes....
I would actually rather have an "unstable" mac with the latest and greatest, then buy a year outdated machine at a premium.
woah....i just got myself dizzy with all that time travel
Can someone explain how these cards differ from gaming cards? ...and why are they so expensive? Thanks.
Typically they run the exact same, and they say they are built for 3d modeling apps so they can charge you more for them.
It does have an onboard video codec decoder/encoder...so if the app can take advantage of it...it will go faster. Also many of them have 4 DACs (rather then gaming cards with 2) so you can make an array of 4 monitors.
Ive done plenty of 3d modeling on high end "gaming" graphics cards...they run great. I've also don't 3d modeling on Quattro 3d modeling graphics cards....didn't notice a difference, they both ran good.
I read about this a while back, and from what I can remember the "gaming cards" basically aren't concerned too much about the quality of the output. They are optimized for drawing speed.
The pro line cards can output the same (and often more) number of shapes, but they are more concerned about the quality of the output.
@AlekZander
What part of THIS-WOULD-MAKE-ONE-BADASS-GAMING-CARD don't you understand?
No 3d, video or CAD here, just Photoshop. That said, 16-bit color depth sounds very appetizing.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-firepro-v8700,2154.html
gamer cards =/= workstation cards
Onlive must not care about graphics technology since their service uses magic and snapping of fingers to work.
$899???
for that price you could have 2-4870x2 with 2GBs of ram each in CrossFire for a total of 4GBs
wouldnt that render faster than one FirePro with 320 streaming processors?
2-4870x2 would equal (1600 (800 x 2) Stream Processing Units per card) 3200 streaming processors!
+ it would have GDDR5 so it would be a faster rendering system than one of these.
Why can't ATI and Nvidia give dimensions for their products!
A middle-school level tech spec writing class would require dimensions as a bare minimum. It's found nowhere in any data sheets for any products.
It's not like this is top secret info. It's useful only for people wondering whether it fits in their case. In my mind it's indicative of the mindset of these companies - they tell you want they want to say, not what you need to know.
The rule for GPU's seems to be "baffle 'em with bullshit if you can't dazzle 'em with your brilliance."