ATI Ships FIRE GL 8800 Boards

According to ATI's FIRE GL 8800 FAQ , the key difference between a workstation card and a high-end 3D gaming card is that "Workstation boards are used to create the models/environments you see in your games while game cards are designed to play the game." That's seems like a fairly accurate assessment, as well as a justification for the high price of the graphics cards that game developers and CAD users pine for. However, the guys that build the games need to play them as well and a bucketful of DDR memory may lead them to believe that their games run faster than they'll run in the field. ATI's new "mid-range 3D workstation graphics board," the FIRE GL 8800, just hit the OEM market today, with a bunch of the cards going to HP for inclusion in upcoming workstations. The FIRE GL 8800 provides drivers for Windows 2000/Windows NT and Linux with hardware-accelerated OpenGL. Standard features include 128MB of DDR memory, DVD video playback, support for 3D resolutions (32-bit color) up to 2048 X 1536 pixels, digital flat panel, and multiple displays. The FIRE GL 8800 uses a 165 MHz integrated TMDS transmitter to support DVI resolutions up to 1600 x 1200 pixels. It also supports DirectX 8.1, all of which would lead one to believe that it would still be a venerable gaming card if one had money to burn. Pricing hasn't been released, which isn't uncommon for workstation cards since they aren't always offered outside of OEM workstations.