The new cards are based on the R600 architecture and include drivers for accelerating applications that support DirectX 10 and OpenGL 2.1. AMD said this could make the FireGL V5600 up to 300 percent faster than the previous-generation FireGL V5200 in the tcvis-01 benchmark from Viewperf 9.0.3. The FireGL range is available with up to 2 GB of graphics memory, and the shader-unit count is no longer limited to 64.
The new FireGL cards are scheduled to become available in September 2007. AMD listed the following prices:
ATI FireGL V8650, 2 GB, approximately US$2,800
ATI FireGL V8600, 1 GB, approximately US$1,900
ATI FireGL V7600, 512 MB, approximately US$1,000
ATI FireGL V5600, 512 MB, approximately US$600
ATI FireGL V3600, 256 MB, approximately US$300
