AMD FirePro Professional Graphics Get Even Better, Outperform Competition by 100 Percent

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - May 24, 2011) - AMD (NYSE: AMD) today introduced the newest generation of professional graphics cards -- AMD FirePro™ V5900 and AMD FirePro™ V7900 -- more than doubling performance of competitive offerings in key professional market applications¹. Created for the design, engineering, financial, and medical fields, the new graphics cards offer AMD PowerTune and GeometryBoost technologies in addition to industry-recognized AMD Eyefinity multi-display support to enhance workflow and application performance.

"Today AMD FirePro, the industry's fastest growing line of professional graphics cards², gets even better with the introduction of the AMD FirePro V5900 and AMD FirePro V7900," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, AMD. "From generation to generation of graphics performance, this success stems from our unwavering focus on the needs of the professional with a complete range of professional graphics solutions. AMD provides superior application performance matched with the workflow and productivity advantages of AMD Eyefinity technology -- this ultimately is the measure that matters to professionals today."

"Dell Precision workstations consistently raise the bar in scalable performance, helping our customers quickly bring their design, animation, scientific and engineering projects to life," said Greg Weir, director of Precision Workstation Product & ISV Marketing, Dell. "With the new AMD FirePro V5900 and AMD FirePro V7900 professional graphics, those customers will get the graphics performance, visualization and reliability they need to stay productive and work at the speed of thought."

Expansive Desktop Environment with AMD Eyefinity Technology
AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology makes it possible to support up to six displays in one large workspace, allowing faster access to applications and enhanced productivity³. With the introduction of the AMD FirePro V7900, which supports up to four displays, and AMD FirePro V5900, which supports up to three displays, engineers and designers have an expansive desktop space from which to see more data, open more applications and view more information at the same time; improving workflow and enabling increased productivity. Also, AMD Eyefinity technology is easy to deploy and offers the lowest total solution cost⁴, for example, in three-display configurations.

Enhanced Performance with AMD PowerTune and GeometryBoost Technologies
New for this generation of AMD FirePro products is AMD PowerTune technology. This state of the art power management technology provides direct control over GPU power usage. Applications enjoy ultimate performance with dynamic clock optimization, while minimizing workstation energy usage. Also new for this generation is GeometryBoost technology -- a unique hardware capability that processes two primitives per clock cycle. The result is incredibly fast geometry performance, ensuring smooth handling of complex models for CAD and DCC users. For example, CAD engineers can handle large models to efficiently complete tasks in real-world applications. The AMD FirePro V5900 and AMD FirePro V7900 also feature DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI™ 1.4 support as well as a massive 2GB GDDR5 frame buffer.

AMD FirePro V7900 professional graphics cards feature four outputs from one card for a low total solution cost, enabling the ability to drive four independent displays from a single slot card. Additionally, this graphics card includes the ability to support framelock and genlock via the AMD FirePro S400 synchronization module as well as 3D stereo⁵ with the included expansion bracket.

AMD FirePro V5900 professional graphics cards deliver a mid-range high performance solution without exceeding 75W power draw with power saving techniques for reduced wattage. Coupled with AMD Eyefinity technology, the AMD FirePro V5900 supports three display outputs.

AMD FirePro products are tested on an on-going basis in real-world scenarios to help ensure compatibility and stability for certification with many leading software applications. AMD FirePro V5900 and AMD FirePro V7900 have received certification for a variety of Autodesk 2012 applications in addition to Ansys^® 13.0, Bentley Systems Microstation V8i, CEI EnSight 9.2.2b, CEI EnSight CFD 3.5, Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp.'s SolidWorks^® 2010 and 2011 3D CAD software, ESRI ArcGIS 10, ESRI ArcGIS 9.3.1, and Side Effects Software Houdini 11.

With the AMD FirePro V7900 starting at $999 USD MSRP and AMD FirePro V5900 starting at $599 USD MSRP, both cards are available from professional graphics retailers worldwide.

Supporting Resources

• AMD FirePro V7900 Product page
• AMD FirePro V5900 Product page
• AMD FirePro Certifications page
• Twitter: Follow AMD professional graphics news on Twitter at @AMDFirePro
• Facebook: Become a fan of AMD technology on Facebook

About AMD
AMD (NYSE: AMD) is a semiconductor design innovator leading the next era of vivid digital experiences with its groundbreaking AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) that power a wide range of computing devices. AMD's server computing products are focused on driving industry-leading cloud computing and virtualization environments. AMD's superior graphics technologies are found in a variety of solutions ranging from game consoles, PCs to supercomputers. For more information, visit http://www.amd.com.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, ATI, the ATI logo, FirePro, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

¹ Testing based on AMD performance lab comparison between AMD FirePro V7900 (41.23) and Nvidia Quadro 4000 (17.84) using SPECapc(SM) (UGS NX4 Graphics Composite 1280 x1024). System configuration: Intel Xeon X3680 @ 3.33GHz, Intel X58, 8GB RAM, Win7 Prof 64-bit, AMD driver: 8.83.5.3 beta1, Nvidia driver: 267.79, SPECapc is a service mark of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation -- see SPEC.org.
² For the 2010 (calendar) fourth quarter, as per the JPR Workstation Report Q4'10, page 37, by Alex Herrera, Senior Analyst. http://jonpeddie.com/publications/workstation_report/
³ AMD Eyefinity technology works with applications that support non-standard aspect ratios, which is required for panning across multiple displays. To enable more than two displays, additional panels with native DisplayPort connectors, and/or DisplayPort compliant active adapters to convert your monitor's native input to your cards DisplayPort or Mini-DisplayPort connector(s), are required. AMD Eyefinity technology can support up to 6 displays using a single enabled AMD FirePro™ graphics card with Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating systems -- the number of displays may vary by board design and you should confirm exact specifications with the applicable manufacturer before purchase. SLS ("Single Large Surface") functionality requires an identical display resolution on all configured displays.
⁴ In a three ViewSonic VP2365wb monitor configuration ($408 USD MSRP each -- http://store.viewsonic.com/html/ibeCCtpItmDspRte.jsp?section=24449&item=2827687) comparing a single AMD FirePro V7900 (1 PCI-E slot and 150 Watts power consumption) for a total $2223 USD MSRP cost versus two Nvidia Quadro 4000 cards (2 PCI-E slots with almost 280 Watts power consumption) for a total $3622 USD MSRP cost.
⁵ AMD HD3D is a technology designed to enable stereoscopic 3D support in software applications such as Computer Aided Design and Digital Content Creation. Additional hardware (e.g. 3D enabled panels, 3D-enabled glasses/emitter, Blu-ray 3D drive) and/or software (e.g. Blu-ray 3D discs, 3D middleware, software applications) are required for the enablement of stereoscopic 3D. Not all features may be supported on all components or systems -- check with your component or system manufacturer for specific model capabilities and supported technologies.