The biggest of which here is that GCN supports higher Eyefinity resolutions than Turks 16K x 16K under Windows (sans Aero) instead of 8K x 8K, which is particularly important for 6x1 configurations or configurations involving multiple 4K monitors (thanks to DP1.2). While AMD’s previous generation Turks ASIC could support 6 DisplayPorts too, it had other fundamental limitations that GCN ended up resolving. With W600, AMD has built a card that can drive as many monitors as the Cape Verde ASIC can handle (6).īut why GCN for the display wall market? As it turns out AMD has added several different features to GCN that prove useful for this market. As we stated earlier AMD is going for the many-monitors markets of digital signage and display walls, and in that market the name of the game is how many monitors can be driven off of a single card. It’s very similar to its consumer counterpart in most respects, but it has two key differences: it’s equipped with 2GB of GDDR5 rather than 1GB, and in place of a mix of monitor outputs it has 6 Mini DisplayPorts. At the same time they’ve even casually chased after the much broader digital signage market with embedded products like the E6760, but this is the first time they’ve gone after display walls with a dedicated part.įundamentally the W600 is a variation of the Cape Verde based Radeon HD 7750. Since then AMD has had the basic capabilities necessary for this market for some time now and have continued to add functions to Eyefinity over the years. Fundamentally such functionality is based around Single Large Surface (SLS) technology, which AMD first gained in 2009 as their Eyefinity technology. In several respects digital signage and display walls are obvious markets for AMD.
GCN’s first professional task as it turns out is going to be a brand-new FirePro subcategory: digital signage and display walls.
Rather it’s a professional card in the not-for-consumers sense.
However in an unusual move despite the FirePro name it’s not a professional card in the traditional sense.
It typically takes AMD 6 months to a year to release a professional product using a new GPU – primarily for driver and software validation purposes – so they’re just now entering that window.Īlmost right on schedule, today AMD is announcing their first Graphics Core Next based FirePro product, the FirePro W600. For AMD’s FirePro customers, they know that with GCN coming up on 6 months old now that this is the time to keep an eye on product announcements.