upFront ezine is an independent newsletter and great resource for anyone in the CAD industry. The latest issue is filled with news and interviews from SolidWorks World 2010 including an interview with AMD’s World Wide Senior Product Marketing Manager for Workstation Graphics, Bahman Dara. I’m going to repeat several of the Q&As here, but check out the newsletter for the full scoop.
“How do you distinguish yourselves from nVidia,” was my first question.
For one, AMD focuses on workstation and DCC graphics only. (DCC is digital content creation, those guys who create graphics for games and TV commercials.) For another, their graphics boards cost less than those from nVidia, when measured by performance per dollar. (nVidia skipped this show; in their place was retail proxy PNY.) AMD has just two product names: Radeon for consumers and FirePro for professionals. FirePro is divided into:
- FirePro V-series for CAD and DCC.
- FirePro Multi-View for multimonitor “text” users like financial traders.
And then both are available in desktop and notebook ("mobile") versions.
“And what about the future?” I wondered.
Mr Dara told me that AMD is working on remote graphics, using compression to deliver graphics from a central server through a cable to desktops via Ethernet or USB.
See the issue to learn more about the SolidWorks World keynotes, future plans for SolidWorks, as well more on AMD plans.
AMD has a strong presence at SolidWorks World 2010 (hence the timing of last week's news that the entire FirePro family is certified for SolidWorks 2010 running Windows 7).
The 3 Eyefinity screens look pretty amazing as you can see in the photos below from the AMD booth.
The entire family of ATI FirePro professional graphics has been certified by Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corp for SolidWorks 2010 on Microsoft Windows 7.1 SolidWorks software is optimized to work in tandem with ATI FirePro professional graphics and Windows 7 to deliver fast performance and advanced stability for professionals working with mechanical designs.
The VISI product suite combines solids and surface modelling, with complex model analysis and plastic flow simulation tailored towards 3D tool design and manufacture.
ATI FirePro workstation graphics accelerators were announced to be thoroughly tested and certified for optimized performance and compatibility with the latest VISI release. Specifcally ATI worked to optimize the software performance using VBO’s (vertex buffer objects). Frame rate jumped from from 5.5 to 146.2 for a 70MB dataset and 9.9 and 238.1 for a 118MB dataset.
AMD is making a big splash at Autodesk University. If you are attending, stop by their booth, #441 - they are giving away multiple copies of 3ds Max, Mudbox, a complete Lenovo system and multiple FirePro graphic cards.
Below is a video capture from the show floor of Autodesk Showcase 2010 running across two displays on a FirePro V7750. The FirePro V5700, V7750, V8700, V8750 cards have all been certified (read that to mean ‘reliability’) for Autodesk Showcase 2010 as well as AutoCAD 2010, 3ds Max, AliasStudio, Inventor, ImageModeler, Maya, MotionBuilder, Mudbox, SoftImage, and Toxik.
Also a quick shot from Autodesk U show floor setup.
Autodesk U’s main keynote was rich in fog and lights, at the Mandalay Bay event center seating 12,000!
Dell today announced the Precision T1500. It is the cheapest workstation in the Dell lineup (with a starting price of $949) and was built from the ground up and certified for AutoCAD. It ships with a choice of AMD’s ATI FirePro V3750 or Nvidia’s Quadro FX 580. What makes this an especially interesting workstation though is that it is based on the new Intel Core i5 (or i7) processors (as opposed to Xeon). This could be particularly interesting when DirectX 11 is out.
News useful for this announcement is the recent review of the Intel Core i5 and i7 systems by 3DProfessor. He also covers performance with the ATI FirePro v5700 and Quadro FX1800.
Saw on Solidsmack that Autodesk launched Project Twitch, an experiment in delivering the company’s flagship products, AutoCAD, Maya, Inventor 2010 and Revit 2010, over the web as Software as a Service (SaaS). The officially stated goal is to allow people to test and try the latest versions of AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor, and Maya without having to install or download the applications.
The technology preview is not intended for production use - it is just a way to provide AutoDesk with feedback. Also you need to be within 1,000 miles of the San Francisco Bay Area to participate (for latency reasons). But it seems obvious to me and others, that this is a foray into delivering their applications on a monthly fee bases over the web - SaaS / Cloud Computing. Very cool.
The next evaluation has been published in the AMD “Reset Your Preconceptions” program for SolidWorks. This is a unique program where where active, professional SolidWorks users are sent a FirePro card to try out in their everyday working environment. Nothing is asked of them other then to share their experiences - be they good, bad, or indifferent.
As I’ve noted before, all of the benchmarks or reviews you read in online new sites are only one metric - one data point, when evaluating which graphics accelerator is right for you. The real test comes when cards are evaluated in real working environments - without any restrictions or marketing spin control. That is the goal of the Reset Your Preconceptions program.
The latest reviewer to publish is SolidWorks user Richard Williams. Below is a summary from his post:
“…/… Whether it was movements or animations, dark or bright, multi-colored or plain, reflective or direct lighting, it just could not have been better or smoother in this writer’s opinion. Nothing I did was jumpy at all and it didn’t stall even once. I now know what my next graphics card is going to be, so it can do all those things I know that are possible now. I will give it my stamp of approval here and I know it beats anything we have here in the home lab right now. I knew the ATI people would not send us out a system unless they were pretty confident about it and now I am. Bye for now.”
This makes the forth reviewer to write up their experiences. The full list to date is:
I’ve said it before, but this kind of real world testing is what I wish more companies would actually do. Everyone always spins things in their press release benchmarks, picking out the tests that are strongest for their cards. This ‘no-constraints on the user’ program by AMD is the kind of thing we need to see more of, so we can make more informed decisions. In the future I would love to see the CrossFire Pro tested like this real world environments by real users.
The webinar Optimizing Your Workstation for SolidWorks by Allen Bourgoyne, AMD graphics guru and SPEC Graphics Performance Characterization committee member, is now available on-demand. (hint: fast forward the first few minutes to get to the meat of the presentation)
Allen shares his tips for getting higher performance from your SolidWorks application. He covers how to analyze and tune your workstation, analyze and improve component performance, and identify software issues that can affect performance.
FireUser.com is a community resource for visualization, 3D, video and engineering professionals to learn about the latest acceleration and display technologies, discuss support issues, as well as influence the features and direction of the FireGL and FirePro accelerator line.
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The webinar Optimizing Your Workstation for SolidWorks by Allen Bourgoyne, AMD graphics guru and 
