ATI introduces 1 GB workstation graphics card

As the workstation market is accelerating its move from the Unix into the Linux and Windows market, there is also more activity in the professional graphics card market. ATI today launched its FireGL V7300 and V7350, two new graphics card market that are targeted the high-end workstation segment and Nvidia’s dominance in workstation graphics sales.

The two cards come with a frame buffer of 512 MB and 1 GB, respectively, a core clock of 600 MHz and a memory clock of 650 MHz. According to ATI, the new cards offer seven times the floating point capability of a 3 GHz Pentium 4 processor, which is generally put into the 12 GFlops range. With about 84 GFlops, the V73xx cards offer about the same floating point performance of an X1800XT graphics card. The new cards do not offer multi-GPU Crossfire capability.

However, the new FireGLs will not be used for gaming, but rather typical workstation applications, which include financial and scientific applications. According to Jon Peddie Research, Nvidia currently holds a market share of 72.8% in the workstation market, while ATI stands at 21.6%. The V73xx cards are a new attempt to tackle the very high-end of the market and especially Nvidia’s SLI-capable Quadro FX 4500.

The FireGL V7300 and V7350 are priced at $1600 and $2000, respectively.