DEVELOP3D - Technology for the product lifecycle

Dassault Systèmes has had positive experiences testing Catia V5 and V6 on six screens using an ATI FirePro V9800.

Forget running four monitors off a single graphics card - AMD has just launched a six monitor capable beast based on its ATI Eyefinity multi monitor graphics technology. Before you start thinking ‘why on earth would I want six monitors on my desktop, where would I put my coffee?’ - with a six monitor setup using an ATI FirePro V9800, AMD is really focused on a brand new market, that of low-cost powerwalls for design/review, digital mockup and client presentations.

While a fully fledged system will set you back the best part of $7,000 ($2,499 for the ATI FirePro V9800, $2,500 for a high-spec workstation and a couple of grand for six HD monitors), the alternative would cost a whole lot more. For one, you’d need three graphics cards and in most cases more than one workstation.

In addition to cost, AMD believes there are technical benefits of using a single card solution instead of multiple graphics cards. “Most applications don’t know how to split their content between multiple GPUs, says Rob Jamieson, product marketing manager EMEA, ATI FirePro at AMD. “[When using multiple graphics cards] if you are looking at the left hand screen and you rotate the object, how does it swap that data to the right hand screen? Does it transfer all that data from one GPU’s memory to the other GPU’s. With Eyefinity that is still the same memory block, it’s still the same GPU so it understands the data. That means you get good performance across the six monitors. It also means most software, out of the box, can understand it and use it.”

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