ATI FireGL V5100 PCI Express

CADalyst, Oct, 2004

ATI Technologies

www.ati.com

Star rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Price: $799 (MSRP)

ATI recently introduced a family of PCI Express graphics cards to join its AGP line of cards. This new family includes the FireGL V3100, V3200, V5100, and the V7100. Each of these cards features 128MB of onboard memory, with the exception of the V7100, which has 256MB. Cadalyst expects to do a First Look review of the V7100 when it becomes available.

I tested and evaluated the ATI FireGL V5100, a 16-lane PCI Express card that features 12-pixel pipelines and six geometry engines. As noted, the V5100 incorporates 128MB of DDR unified graphics memory.

ATI notes that it offers two-way acceleration with its single-chip PCI Express solution, a bridgeless single-chip design. Unlike other bridged PCI Express implementations, ATI says that it delivers full bandwidth upstream and downstream, doubling the capabilities of its previous products.

Output connectors on the FireGL V5100 incorporate dual-display support via two DVI connectors and a stereo 3D connector with quad-buffered support. Drivers are available for Windows and Linux, and are optimized and certified for professional workstation applications based on OpenGL and Microsoft DirectX 9. The dual DVI feature supports any combination of digital and analog displays, with a maximum of 2048X1536 per display in dual display mode. The V5100 also supports 3840X2400 displays.

I used a prerelease version of ATI's unified driver, v6.14.10.6476, to run the benchmark tests. As is often the case with beta drivers, I ran into some difficulties--particularly in running the demanding Cadalyst Labs C2001 benchmark. These problems should be resolved with the final release of the drivers.

As noted in the ATI FireGL X3-256 AGP-based graphics card review, the ATI drivers use ATI's SMARTSHADER technology to provide programmable pixel and vertex shaders and multiple render target support. ATI's SMOOTHVISION technology also provides 2X/4X/6X full-scene antialiasing modes and 2X/4X/8X/16X anisotropic filtering modes.

Benchmark performance for the ATI FireGL V5100 was 107.05 for the total score of the Cadalyst Labs C2001 test, with an averaged high/low score of 77.88 for the MAXBENCH4 benchmark. On the proe-02 test set of SPECviewperf 7.1.1, the FireGL V5100 produced a speedy score of 50.64--this roundup's fastest performance on this particular test suite.

The ATI FireGL V5100 offers solid midrange performance at a good price and is covered by a three-year warranty with toll-free advanced technical support. The V5100 is a capable midrange graphics card with a nice feature set.