NVIDIA, ATi Bring Five OpenGL Workstation Graphics for PCI Express to Market

ATI FireGL V5100

ATI's FireGL V5100 belongs to the upper mid-range. After all, the X800 chip is already incorporated in the Pro version. In this case, "Pro" stands for 12 pixel pipelines. In contrast, the X800 XT, which is fitted to the V7100, has 16 pixel pipelines. Both versions of the X800 chip have the codename R423GL PRO2, with the number "3" referring to PCI Express. The AGP model answers to the name R420GL.

ATi has managed to pack a total of 160 million transistors into the chip. There are six engines to take care of the geometry calculations. In contrast to the V7100 with G-DDR3 memory, only traditional DDR memory is used for the V5100. At 22.8 gigabytes per second, the 256-bit memory interface is also suitable for processor-intensive rendering jobs. The V5100 is equipped with 128 MB. Power consumption remains under control despite the large number of transistors. As a result an extra power supply, such as in the case of the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400, is not required.

The FireGL V5100 will cost all of $799/€639 in retail channels.

There has been no scrimping on connections here. Two DVI sockets for digital or analog monitors and a stereo connector for 3D spectacles are to be found on the card's slot. Unfortunately the dual-link feature for ultra-high resolutions on digital displays cannot yet be used with this card. That only works with the V7100, which can accommodate nine Mpixel displays at resolutions of 3840 x 2400.