ATI starts first 1GB graphics card

ATI unwrapped its latest pair of workstation-oriented graphics chips – including what it claims is the first ever board to support one gigabyte of graphics memory. The FireGL parts are also the first products of their class from ATI to support Shader Model 3.0. The 1GB FireGL V7350 is accompanied by the V7300, a 512MB version.

The GPUs are fabbed at 90nm and derive from ATI’s Radeon X1000 series. As such they incorporate its Avivo image enhancement pipeline, including support for 40-bit and 64-bit RGB colour, and the latest Radeons’ 512-bit ring memory bus architecture.