This video of Jon Clark, Sr. Applications Engineer with AMD, gives a high-level overview of AMD FirePro Eyefinity Technology. It starts by highlighting the FirePro V3900, V4900, V5900, and V7900. At about 1:15 sec in there is a great demo of a single V7900 using Eyefinity to drive three 24” displays running PTC’s Windchill, Pro/Engineer, and Creo.
A complete unboxing and setup video for the new entry-level (in price) FirePro V3900 workstation graphics card. These short Newegg videos are actually the next best thing to actually unboxing and handling one of the cards. This one also has a series of Q&As which were put directly to the FirePro team.
One interesting Q&A was if you need a gaming card in addition to your FirePro? The answer, no, the latest FirePro drivers enable high-performance in games as well as pro apps. Another interesting point was that FirePro cards are made only by AMD so reliability is absolute. (This contrasts to gamer cards which are manufactured by third parties.)
Develop3D reviews the new AMD FirePro V3900 and V4900 graphic cards.
“We tested both cards under SolidWorks 2010, using our standard camera benchmark with level of detail switched off and RealView enabled ——putting a bigger load on the system by displaying real world materials, reflections and shadows. ... Both cards did themselves justice.”
“Low-cost professional CAD graphics cards used to be about providing professional hardware for entry-level CAD software like AutoCAD — an alternative to consumer cards. With the FirePro V3900 and V4900 already certified for the likes of Siemens NX, PTC Creo and SolidWorks — and demonstrating good performance — it looks like they may well be giving AMD’s mid-range professional cards a run for their money in the future.”
Develop3D reviews Scan’s new 3XS i7 Eyefinity workstation for design and visualization. The system includes Intel’s Core i7 2700K and three professional Dell UltraSharp displays (1,920 x 1,200), all driven by a single AMD FirePro V5900 graphics card.
From the conclusion:
“When you first start using three displays side by side it feels like a bit of a luxury in much the same way as it does when moving from one to two displays but you soon find an important use for every last pixel. It’s certainly not for everyone, and if you only use one design application, day in day out, plus a bit of email and web browsing, then two monitors should be more than enough.
But when you move into portrait mode, it offers an entirely different experience. It’s perfect for design/review sessions or when you need to see a lot of details at the same time, such as an entire assembly or a detailed 2D drawing.”
AMD launched a FirePro Development user community for end-users, developers and AMD experts to share tips and best practices about the FirePro Vx800 and Vx900 graphic cards. The newly updated community page greatly improves users’ ability to ask questions and get answers on any FirePro related topic:
For example, here’s an interesting post just answered:
Question
I’m trying to solve a very specific problem. For this, I need to run 4 displays at 120Hz, and have the vsync for each trigger a quarter of a frame after the previous:
Display 0, start frames at 0s, 4/480s, 8/480s, ...
Display 1, start frames at 1/480s, 5/480s, 9/480s, ...
Display 2, start frames at 2/480s, 6/480s, 10/480s, ...
Display 3, start frames at 3/480s, 7/480s, 11/480s, ...
Now the question is, can I do this with one S400 and one or more graphic cards?
Answer
1: Yes, you can connect up to 4 GPUs to a single S400 board.
2: You can genlock multiple displays that are connected to a single GPU as long as the connected monitors are identical.
3: The accepted input range for the house sync is between 15 and 120 H
The newly announced AMD FirePro V3900 workstation graphics card is powered by a new Turks GPU, with 1GB of DDR3 memory, 480 stream processors and support for up to 5 display devices using AMD Eyefinity and DisplayPort 1.2. It is designed to deliver the performance, reliability and compatibility of a high end graphics card at an entry level price point.
Like its higher end counterparts, the V4900, V5900 and V7900, the entry-level FirePro V3900 has been tested and certified with many leading DCC and CAD applications including AutoCAD, Siemens NX, PTC Creo, SolidWorks and 3ds Max. to ensure compatibility, stability, and optimal performance. It of course offers full support for OpenGL 4.2, OpenCL 1.1 and DirectX 11.
Raw compute performance as measured in single-precision GFlops is 20 percent higher than the V3800 it replaces. AMD has run some comparison benchmarks comparing the V3900 to the V3800 and the Nvidia Quadro 400. See below.
With an MSRP of $119 this is an amazing deal for entry level workstation users.
A complete unboxing and setup video for the FirePro V7900 video card with an example of driving 3 displays using Eyefinity. These little Newegg videos are actually the next best thing to actually unboxing and handling one of the cards. (Also see the videos for the FirePro V4900 and FirePro V5900.)
You can see the the packaging, the included CrossFire X connector, 3D connector, 4 active DisplayPort-DVI adaptors (for older displays) and the actual card including the 4 DisplayPorts. It also discusses the PowerTune and GeometryBoost tech, as well as the Catalyst Control center software.
SolidWorks World 2012 is coming up Feb 12-15, 2012 in San Diego. The AMD FirePro team will again have a strong presence reflecting the long-standing collaboration and optimization with SolidWorks/Dassualt Systemes.
On display in Booth #207, AMD FirePro engineers will present demos of FirePro graphic cards for entry to high-end users, mobile workstations, Eyefinity and 3DVIA Composer.
In Break Out Session #4080 on Tuesday, February 14, 10:30 AM, Oliver Zegdoun will present: “Tuning Your Workstation to Get the Best Out of SolidWorks”
AMD today announced the AMD Radeon HD 7970. Why this is particularly interesting to the professional CAD/DCC community is because of the new SIMD-based Graphics Core Next (GCN) Architecture first detailed at the 2011 Fusion Developer Summit. Basically GCN enables the card to act both as a a graphics workhorse and a computing (e.g. OpenCL, C++ AMP, DirectCompute) workhorse for the processing of non-3D workloads such as video rendering, photo editing, code cracking, physics FX and scientific calculations.
The 28nm process means the new cards are faster than their 32 nanometer predecessor equivalents, without consuming significantly more power, or generating more heat (even though the number of stream processors increased from 1536 to 2048 and clock speed increased from 880MHz to 925MHz).
Also of note is Eyefinity 2.0 which adds support for stereo 3D, universal bezel compensation, brand new display configurations and an expanded and more immersive field of view. This allows users with 2560x1600 monitors in an AMD Eyefinity 5x1 landscape configuration to achieve a horizontal resolution of 12,800 pixels, driving more than 20 million pixels of screen real estate.
Take aways from my perspective: GPGPU computing is now mainstream. High-performance with low power consumption is mainstream. 3+ display Eyefinity and stereo 3D are mainstream. And lastly, this makes me excited about the next generations of FirePro graphics cards.
This is one of the first videos I have seen focused on the $189 FirePro V4900 that was announced at the beginning of November
If you missed the news, the V4900 comes with 1GB of 128-bit GDDR5 RAM and supports DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.2, and OpenCL. It also supports Eyefinity with 1 DVI port and 2 full size DisplayPorts which means the V4900 can be used to drive up to 6 displays when paired with MST hubs. Like all FirePro cards, the drivers are certified for specific professional applications and the board comes with a 3 yr 24/7 warranty. At $189 the V4900 doesn’t have any direct competition - it’s more than $200 cheaper than the Quadro 2000 and competitive with the Quadro 600.
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