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ATI FireGL Z1 128MB DDR for $149

"MUST BE USED WITH AGP PRO CONNECTOR ONLY."

Won't fit in your standard mobo. I suppose it's a good deal for those dealing with 3d graphics and who have compatible mobo.
 
The Asus A7N8X-Deluxe is a fairly common mobo and it has AGP Pro. If you are going for an A64-based workstation, though, you are out of luck on this deal. The dual DVI goodness is an added plus, especially with the killer deals on the Dell flat panels.

As I do have an A7N8X mobo, I am very tempted to grab one as an upgrade for my current FireGL 8800.
 
"featuring FGL 9500 Visual Processing Unit" aka = uses the ati radeon 9500 chipset

really, the only thing that separates these cards are the drivers that they use. so with that being said, is $149 a good price for a radeon 9500? (at least thats how i look at it)
 
Yeah, I just checked the specs on ATi's website, and it lists only 4 pipelines, so it isn't even equal to a 9500 Pro.

Still a decent deal if you need a dual DVI workstation card that doesn't need softmodding to get the professional OpenGL features running. The FireGLs tend to get bitchified by the Quadros when it comes to OpenGL apps, though, which is why you don't see that many good deals in the Quadros.
 
you used to also be able to soft mod a nvidia card into a quadro. i dont know if you still can though.

 
Originally posted by: skunkbuster
you used to also be able to soft mod a nvidia card into a quadro. i dont know if you still can though.
Click to expand...

you can. virtually all nvidia cards are moddable with one method or another. most 6800 gt/ultras can go to a quadro 4000 with a simple bios flash. see guru3d.com rivatuner forum for details
 
Update on this deal, the price is now down to $119. It is getting a bit warmer and I'm thinking about biting. Cheap dual DVI could be a good thing. I just don't know how long I'm going to keep my current mobo, since none of the new ones support AGP Pro.
 
Isn't the FireGL line more of a professional graphics card, i.e. what someone doing rendering work for a living would use?
 
Originally posted by: huesmann
Isn't the FireGL line more of a professional graphics card, i.e. what someone doing rendering work for a living would use?
Click to expand...

Yes, and this is a pretty decent deal for someone who wants a real pro OpenGL card and doesn't want to mess around with softmods. This and a pair of Dell 2001FPs running off the twin DVI ports would be super sweet for someone putting together a Maya or 3ds MAX modeling workstation. The DVI image quality of these built by ATI workstation cards is flawless, even with two outputs going at the same time. The only real downside is the lack of AGP Pro support on A64 mobos (so you are left with only an Athlon XP or s478 P4 as your processor choices) and the fairly long in the tooth GPU on the card.
 
So what's so special about these workstaton cards? Since they're just based off the regular gaming chipsets, what makes them good for 3D graphical work?
 
mod to firegl X1 (or whatever the 9700 based firegl is) and have a 9700pro with dual dvi for 120 with some luck. seems like a good deal to me. btw, 2001fp is nice. two are even better!

edit: the pcb layout looks right for the mod, BUT there should be 8 memory chips, 4 per side. only 2 are shown on the front of the card (we can assume that there are 2 behind them), so something looks weird. maybe the picture is wrong or its just a cut-down 256mb card, which would be unmoddable afaik. Since it's unmoddable, its not worth getting unless you want a decent video card with dualdvi for cheap. dont expect more than 11k 3dmark01 (my bro gets about 13k with a 9500pro and a 2.5ghz barton) out of this card
 
Originally posted by: igowerf
So what's so special about these workstaton cards? Since they're just based off the regular gaming chipsets, what makes them good for 3D graphical work?
Click to expand...

Hardware support for anti-aliasing wireframes (normal video cards just do full-scene AA), more hardware supported light sources for your shaded viewports, two sided lighting in hardware, proper overlay support for things like Maya paint. The pro OGL cards also are designed to handle more hardware acclerated 3D viewports at a time than gaming cards. Also the drivers used in the pro cards have optimizations for different CAD and 3D modeling programs and are written for better overall system stability than the gaming drivers (they don't get updated as often, but that may be because they are more throughly check out than the gaming drivers before being released).

A lot of these features can be unlocked on a normal gaming card if you softmod, but a softmod isn't going to give you dual DVI. Plus I'm not sure I'd want to risk my business (if I had a 3D design or CAD business) on trusting a softmodded card to work as flawlessly as it needs to on a production workstation.

 
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