Monday, March 20, 2006

ATI unveil first 1GB graphics card

ATI have officially unveiled the first consumer desktop graphics card to have over 1 gigabyte of dedicated RAM.

ATI's new FireGL range is the first ATI graphics card range to support DirectX Shader Model 3.0, a really cool technology that allows much more complex lighting effects. Nvidia cards have supported DX Shader 3.0 since the top-end cards of their 5000 series, and all cards in their 6000 and 7000 series. This means that until now mid-range Nvidia cards such as the Geforce 6600, have supported Shader Model 3.0, where even the top ATI cards have not.

The specifications of the FireGL V7350 are pretty impressive, with 16 pixel shader processors and 8 vertex engines, meaning that the cards can churn out high-resolution, high-fidelity graphics even faster than their predecessors.

The V7350 model is currently priced at around $1,999 (about £1,100) and the slightly lower-spec V7300 goes for $1,599 (about £900).

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