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The year 2005 has seen a new era in workstations specifically driven by the new dual core offerings from AMD and Intel Corp. The processors bring a new level of creativity to market while at the same time, ensuring that those who use workstations on a daily basis not only have a choice in CPUs, but can benefit from the power that dual core CPUs bring to the market.

Additionally, artists have been going to larger and larger displays, forgoing the 19-inch LCDs and 21 inch CRTs in favor of the larger 24-inch and larger LCDs that have hit the market in the past couple of years. Display offerings from such companies as Sony, Dell, HP, IBM, Apple Computer and others have given artists the larger real estate they need to manipulate bigger datasets that bring about more visual realism to projects. These displays are making available higher resolutions and contrast ratios to digital artists.

And finally, the graphics card vendors are introducing cards that are capable of not only manipulating 4k x 4k imagery, but driving high resolution displays as well, with some offering support for up to 3840 x 2400 resolution in single LCD configurations. These cards are designed to handle most if not all the graphics work, enabling the host CPU to reduce its load and concentrate on other functions such as OS and rendering tasks. As a workstation matures, the graphics card is often the first peripheral that is upgraded to bring about a new level of performance to older systems. These primarily 16x PCI Express-based solutions are essential bridges that enable artists to take full advantage of the 3D and effects software in their toolboxes.  

We'll take a look at the latest specs from 3dlabs, NVIDIA, and ATI. We'll also spec out some of the latest 24-inch LCD displays from the likes of Dell, HP, IBM, and ViewSonic, and finally we'll look at some of the latest workstation offerings from Alienware, IBM, BOXX Technologies, HP, and Dell.

NVIDIA
	QuadroFX 3400	QuadroFX 4000	Quadro FX 4400	Quadro FX 4400G
Memory size	256MB GDDR	256MB DDR	512MB GDDR3	512MB GDDR3
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	28.8GB/sec	32GB/sec	33.6GB/sec	33.6GB/sec
I/O Connectors	DVI-I/DVI-I +ST	DVI-I/DVI-I +ST	DVI-I/DVI-I +ST	DVI-I/DVI-I +ST
Dual Link DVI Support	1	2	2	2
Shader Model	3.0	3.0	3.0	3.0
SLI Support	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Genlock/Framelock	No	No	No	Yes
Triangles/sec (M)	117	133	135	135
Pixel/sec (B)	4.2	4.5	6.4	6.4
Max Resolution	3840 x 2400	3840 x 2400	3840 x 2400	3840 x 2400
Graphics Bus	PCI Express	AGP 8X	PCI Express	PCI Express

3dlabs
	Wildcat Realizm 100	Wildcat Realizm 200	Wildcat Realizm 800
STRONG> Onboard memory	256MB GDDR	512MB GDDR	640MB GDDR
Graphics Interface	AGP 8X	AGP 8X	PCI Express
Visual Processing Unit	Single	Single	Dual
Vertex Scalability Unit	N/A	N/A	Single
Board Size	Full Length/Full	Full Length/Full	Full Length/Full
OS Support	Windows 2000/XP Red Hat/Suse Linux	Windows 2000/XP Red Hat/Suse Linux	Windows 2000/XP Red Hat/Suse Linux
Professional Application Certification	Yes	Yes	Yes
Activity Windows Manager	Yes	Yes	Yes
Display Connectors	Two DVI-I analog/digital output ports-single link DVI	Two DVI-I analog/digital output ports-dual link DVI	Two DVI-I analog/digital output ports-dual link DVI
Analog	single or dual display devices	single or dual display devices	single or dual display devices
Stereo	Yes	Yes	Yes
Genlock Multiview Support	N/A	Optional	Optional
Max Resolution	2456 x 1536	3840 x 2400	3840 x 2400

ATI
	FireGL V7100	FireGL V5100	FireGL V5000	FireGL V3200	FireGL V3100
Memory	256MB	128MB	128MB	128MB	128MB
Memory interface	256-bit	256-bit	128-bit	128-bit	128-bit
Bandwidth	28.8GB/Sec	22.4GB/sec	13.6GB/sec	12.8GB/sec	6.4GB/sec
Geometry Engines	6	6	6	2	2
Pixel Pipelines	16	12	8	4	4
Display Support	DVI-I/DVI-I	DVI-I/DVI-I	DVI-I/DVI-I	DVI-I/DVI-I	DVI-I/VGA
Dual Link DVI capable	Yes	No	Yes	No	No
Stereo 3D Support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Triangles/sec	750M	675M	637M	250M	200M
Pixels/sec	8.0G	5.4G	3.4G	2.0G	1.6G
Max Resolution (single display)	3840 x 2400	3840 x 2400	3840 x 2400	3840 x 2400	3840 x 2400

 

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