Overview

The new turbo-charged ATI FireGL™ X3-256 is our highest performance workstation graphics accelerator designed for AGP-based workstations. Delivering the fastest 3D performance and superior quality graphics for professional applications, this powerful card is based on ATI’s stunning graphics architecture with six parallel geometry engines and sixteen parallel rendering pipelines. The ATI FireGL X3-256 takes the leading computer-aided design (CAD) and digital content creation (DCC) applications to a new level of interactivity.

With 256MB of GDDR3 memory and hardware accelerated rendering using OpenGL Shading Language and DirectX 9 HLSL, the ATI FireGL X3-256 empowers 3D professionals to realize a dramatic increase in productivity and a reduction in design cycle times, without sacrificing quality. All ATI FireGL boards are certified for the leading OpenGL and DirectX applications, with full support under Windows and Linux environments.

All advanced graphics features are available across the entire ATI FireGL product line from mobile workstations through high-end systems, and are enabled with a single graphics driver, simplifying system administration within the production environment.

Features

Revolutionary graphics architecture

• 12-pixel pipeline architecture providing high performance, parallel rendering capabilities
• 32-bit for each color component (RGBA) enables true-life images to be displayed beyond 16.7M colors
• Full scene anti-aliasing
• High-speed 256MB DDR memory to meet the needs of the most demanding CAD/CAM and DCC applications
• 256-bit memory interface removes hardware performance bottlenecks and provides end users with faster 3D performance
• Dual DVI-I connectors support any combination of digital flat panel and VGA displays
• Dual link support ultra-high resolution 9Mpixel displays
• Quad-buffered stereo 3D output enables even more realistic experineces
• AGP 4X/8X support

 

Optimized Software Support

• Optimized drivers certified for the leading CAD and DCC software applications
• Full support for the latest OpenGL® API and Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0
• Hardware accelerated rendering using OpenGL Shading Language and DirectX 9 HLSL
• Robust support for Windows® and Linux® environments
  

Specifications

Graphics technology

• Powered by ATI’s parallel processing Visual Processing Unit (GPU)
• 256-bit high bandwidth memory architecture
• 6 parallel geometry engines
• 16 parallel pixel pipelines
• 128-bit full floating point precision
• 32-bits per RGBA component displays beyond 16.7M colors

 

Display support

• Dual DVI-I supports any combination of digital and analog displays
• Maximum resolution of 2048x1536 per analog display
• Dual link support for ultra-high resolution 3740 x 2400 displays
• Independent resolution and refresh rate selection for any two connected displays
• Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
• Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI compliant)
• Quad-buffered stereo 3D support

API and Operating systems support

• OpenGL®
• OpenGL Shading Language
• Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0
• DirectX® 9.0 HLSL
• Windows® XP/Windows® 2000
• Linux®

Graphic Features

Hardware acceleration of the following:

• Anti-aliased points and lines or full scene anti-aliasing (2X, 4X, 6X)
• 3D lines and triangles
• Stipple points
• Two-sided lighting
• Up to 8 light sources
• Directional and local lighting
• OpenGL overlay planes
• Occlusion culling
• 6 user defined clip planes
• OpenGL polymode functions
• 32-bit (24+8-bit stencil) Z Buffer
• Fast Z and color clears
• Full DX9 vertex shader support with 4 vertex units
  

SmartShader™

• Programmable pixel and vertex shaders
• 16 textures per pass
• Pixel shaders up to 160 instructions with 32-bit floating point precision for each RGBA component
• Multiple render target support
• Shadow volume rendering acceleration
• High precision 10-bit per channel frame buffer support
  

SmoothVision™

• 2X/4X/6X full scene anti-aliasing modes
• High performance adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns
• 2X/4X/8X/16X anisotropic filtering modes
• Adaptive algorithm with bi-linear (performance) and tri-linear (quality) options
  

HYPER Z™ III+

• 3-level Hierarchical Z-Buffer with early Z test
• Lossless Z-Buffer compression (up to 24:1)
• Fast Z-Buffer Clear

System requirements

• Intel® Pentium® 4/Xeon™, AMD Athlon®/Opteron™ or compatible CPU
• AGP 8X/4X bus
• 128MB of system memory (256MB or more recommended)
• Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
• 300 watt or greater power supply (recommended)

Warranty and Support

• 3-year limited product repair/replacement warranty
• Workstation level technical support via email and phone
• Advanced parts replacement option

View ATI FireGL™ X3-256 Datasheet