Sapphire Technology Limited, the only partner of AMD workstation graphics (except Japan) today announced — ATI FireGL™ and ATI FirePro™ 3D workstation graphics cards have completely passed all Solidworks 2009 tests and gained global certifications. Meanwhile, two mid-range models — ATI FireGL™ V3600 and V5600 have been certified by the other two SolidWorks’tools — COSMOS 2008 and eDrawing 2008. COSMOS 2008 is designed for the SolidWorks models and predict how they will behave in the real situations. Whereas with eDrawings viewer, anyone with a PC can interpret and understand 2D and 3D design data. SolidWorks users can enjoy the most stable work and optimized performance by using AMD workstation graphics.Solidworks is outstanding for 3D mechanical CAD field, also offer a wide range of simulation products. They have innovative creativity and the biggest users’ community. The newest version “Solidworks 2009” speeds up to 65% over SolidWorks 2008. SolidWorks has added lots new features, such as SpeedPak Technology, apply filters and Sort BOM by Column, sensors monitor, electrical component library etc. By using AMD certified workstation graphics, you can spend more time on productivity, less time at work.
Here introducing a special feature in Solidworks2009-- Vertex Buffer Objects. VBO is activated by default in SolidWorks 2009 and ATI FireGL™ and ATI FirePro™ are completely support. It is a buffer which is stored on the GPU memory and when activated, the application stores vertex data for triangles and lines in this location. VBO is a way for an application to render data without repeatedly accessing the computer’s sub systems suchas the hard drive and therefore help achieve higher operational performance. Additionally, the other fantastic function “RealView Graphics” which was released in SolidWorks 2008, it is hardware support of advanced shading in real time. By applying appearances and scenes, your models come to life without going through rendering processes such as PhotoWorks. Your system must have a workstation class graphics card capable of supporting RealView. See the SolidWorks Hardware support web site for a complete list of supported graphics cards and drivers, and you will see ATI FireGL™ and ATI FirePro™ series are passed with all strict testing.
Why Choose ATI FireGL™ and ATI FirePro™:
http://workstation.sapphiretech.com/archive/newsletter/eng/0175/eng_8_20090211_9157.pdf
For more product information, please visit Sapphire and AMD website: http://workstation.sapphiretech.com/
Read d rest...
SAPPHIRE Technology, the leading manufacturer and worldwide supplier of AMD/ATI based graphics solutions is now shipping a new version of the SAPPHIRE HD 4670 equipped with GDDR4 memory – bringing new levels of performance to enthusiasts on a budget.The new SAPPHIRE HD 4670 GDDR4 has been production engineered by SAPPHIRE to bring new levels of performance to the mainstream previously associated only with high end cards. With its 320 stream processors and carrying 512MB of GDDR4 memory the SAPPHIRE HD 4670 GDDR4 is now the best product in its class. Clock speeds are 750MHz for the core and 1100MHz (2.2GHz effective) for the memory making this the fastest HD 4670 card available. The card is cooled by a new large diameter fan based cooler which keeps noise levels to the minimum (<20dba). class="fullpost">or more cards to be used together on a CrossFireX compatible mainboard for higher graphics performance. The series uses the powerful graphics architectures from the ATI division of AMD, incorporating multi-purpose stream processing units and improved memory management architecture. With the latest drivers, this product offers ATI Stream processing for the acceleration of supported applications.
SAPPHIRE graphics cards in the HD 4600 series incorporate the latest ATI Avivo™ HD Technology for enhanced Video display. They feature a new generation of built in hardware UVD (Unified Video decoder) considerably reducing CPU load and delivering smooth decoding of Blu-ray™ and HD DVD content for both VC-1 and H.264 codecs, as well as Mpeg files. Three types of video outputs are provided on the rear bracket - DVI, VGA and HDMI - allowing direct connection to a variety of displays. Two simultaneous displays are supported.
SAPPHIRE HD 4000 series graphics cards are Microsoft Windows Vista™ Premium certified and supported by the ATI Catalyst® suite of software, ensuring customers have ongoing access to software updates for performance, stability and added features. Like the previous generation, these cards support DirectX10.1 for enhanced rendering performance and lighting effects.
Read d rest...
SAPPHIRE Technology is now introducing the SAPPHIRE ATOMIC HD 4870 X2, an exclusive new dual GPU water cooled version of the standard ATI HD 4870 X2 card. Because the article is written in Greek which is not my strongest language, I'll stick to the specs and pics, after all that's all we need. As usual, the SAPPHIRE ATOMIC HD 4870 X2 comprises of two complete HD 4870 graphics systems on a single PCI-Express card connected by an on-board PCI Express Gen 2 bridge chip. Each GPU has 1GB of GDDR5 memory, making a total of 2GB on-board memory. Core clock speed for this model is 800MHz, there are 2x800 stream processors, the memory clock speed is 1000MHz with 512-bit memory interface. What's so special in this model is the full cover liquid cooling provided by the famous OEM coolingexpert Asetek. The water-block cools both GPUs, all memory chips, the bridge chip and all the power elements. Two Dual Link DVI outputs are provided as well as TV-Out. Additionally the card's bundle includes a CCL UV lamp and Sapphire USB memory stick with drivers. The card will be available starting December 18th for a MSRP of $649.Read d rest...
Although NVIDIA's new low-profile GeForce 9400 graphics card has been officially announced for quite some time now, one of its add-in-board partners decided to keep its customers waiting for a while. However, the company has officially launched its version of the new GeForce graphics card earlier today, offering four new models, based on the same GPU.As we mentioned in our previous articles, NVIDIA's new GeForce 9400 card has been designed to accommodate the graphics requirements of entry-level users who don't spend their entire budget on just one video card. In addition, the GeForce 9400 GT features several NVIDIA technologies and supports Microsoft's DirectX 10 API. Furthermore, this is also one of the few NVIDIA cards that have been developed using a 55nm process technology, which AMD has been adopting for quite some time now.Back to Sapphire's latest GeForce cards, the four new models have been designed to deliver a maximum of 1GB of DDR2 memory. However, two of them will be equipped with only 512MB DDR2 memory on a 128-bit memory interface. There is another way you can differentiate the four models from one another, as the two 1GB DDR2-enabled cards are equipped with a passive cooling solution. All four of them are based on PCI-Express 2.0 interface and have the same clock settings as the reference model, with 550MHz for the GPU and 800MHz for the memory.
In addition to the new GeForce 9400GT models, Sparkle can also offer four GDDR3-equipped cards, all of which have only 512MB of memory. In total, Sparkle has 12 graphics cards, based on the same 9400GT GPU. So we could say that if you are an entry-level user and you are searching for a new low-profile graphics card, you should find what you are searching for in Sapphire's product lineup.
Read d rest...
This is Sapphire Atomic HD 3870s new cooler. It is a single slot design, and integrate with Vapor Chamber technology. The Vapor Chamber is under the black shell, only 3.0mm thick.Source said the 3mm Vapor Chamber can absorb as much as 150w heat and emit to the fin. With the single slot cooler, HD 3870 now has the ability to run Quad CrossfireX on a bad-PCIe-design 790FX mobo.
The Vapor Chamber is not a new technology, it is based on the same theory with heatpipe. But there is a difference. Heatphipes heat transmission is from the hot end to the cool end, limited by its shape. Vapor Chamber is from the hot surface to the cool surface. This design makes the vapor chambers performance not limited by its shape.
This is Sapphire Atomic HD 3870s new cooler. It is a single slot design, and integrate with Vapor Chamber technology. The Vapor Chamber is under the black shell, only 3.0mm thick.
Source said the 3mm Vapor Chamber can absorb as much as 150w heat and emit to the fin. With the single slot cooler, HD 3870 now has the ability to run Quad CrossfireX on a bad-PCIe-design 790FX mobo.
The Vapor Chamber is not a new technology, it is based on the same theory with heatpipe. But there is a difference. Heatphipes heat transmission is from the hot end to the cool end, limited by its shape. Vapor Chamber is from the hot surface to the cool surface. This design makes the vapor chambers performance not limited by its shape.
And here is a technical explanation of the vapor chamber from Thermacore:
"A vapor chamber is a vacuum vessel with a wick structure lining the inside walls that is saturated with a working fluid. As heat is applied, the fluid at that location immediately vaporizes and the vapor rushes to fill the vacuum. Wherever the vapor comes into contact with a cooler wall surface it will condense, releasing its latent heat of vaporization. The condensed fluid returns to the heat source via capillary action, ready to be vaporized again and repeat the cycle. The capillary action of the wick enables the vapor chamber to work in any orientation with respect to gravity."
The reference cooler is based on cooper fins, while the new Atomic version is only aluminum. But source said the new cooler can deliver more heat away. In fullload mode the temperature of HD 3870 with reference cooler is about 74C while HD 3870 with new atomic cooler is only 67C.
So it seems good enough, lets hope Atomic version HD 3870 can come out soon and we can have a full test about it.
Read d rest...
