OpenGL 4.2 improves shader performance, texture handling, & speeds repositioning of complex objects

New functionality in the today announced OpenGL 4.2 specification includes enabling shaders with atomic counters for things like object for single-rendering-pass order-independent transparency, capturing GPU-tessellated geometry to enable complex objects to be efficiently repositioned and replicated, modifying an arbitrary subset of a compressed texture, without having to re-download the whole texture to the GPU for significant performance improvements, and enhanced transfer of data between shader stages.

Christophe Riccio has published a review of the new features in OpenGL 4.2 on Google Docs

Any FirePro graphics card will be able to run applications that use 4.2.

• AMD OpenGL 4.2 Beta Catalyst Preview Driver for Windows
• AMD OpenGL 4.2 Beta Catalyst Preview Driver for Linux

How to Keep Your Workstation Graphics Card Updated, Part 1: Why Is It So Hard?

I recently got to thinking about auto-updating for graphics drivers (similar to how version auto-updates in Chrome browser).  My thought was that a FirePro card could automatically update every time there was a performance update. Or maybe it would at least pop up a notification: “Hey there is a new version of your graphics card driver.  Would you like to update now?”.  This sounded like a great way to always have the latest performance enhancements and bug fixes.  So I did a little research on the topic and have started a series of posts on the Cadalyst CADSpeed blog site.

The first in the series is: How to Keep Your Workstation Graphics Card Updated, Part 1: Why Is It So Hard?

ATI FirePro driver V8.773.1.1 adds support for FirePro mobility graphics on HP and Dell laptops

The new ATI FirePro driver V8.773.1.1 available at http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html adds support for FirePro mobility professional graphics on HP and Dell mobile workstations including DirectX11, OpenGL 4, OpenCL and of course ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology. Specific drivers are for:

• HP EliteBook 8540w w/ ATI FirePro M5800
• HP EliteBook 8740w w/ ATI FirePro M7820
• Dell Precision M6400 w/ ATI FirePro M7740
• Dell Precision M6500 w/ ATI FirePro M7740

FirePro driver v8.801 offers full support for OpenGL 4.1 on Windows and Linux

Today, in conjunction with SolidWorks World 2011, AMD announced the new FirePro v8.801 unified driver with full compatibility for OpenGL 4.1 across the current FirePro line (V3800, V4800, V5800, V7800, V8800 and V9800), for Windows 7, Vista, and XP, as well as Linux. Details include:

• Improved OpenCL interoperability for accelerating computationally intensive visual applications
• Continued support for both the Core and Compatibility profiles first introduced with OpenGL 3.2, enabling developers to use a streamlined API or retain backwards compatibility for existing OpenGL code, depending on their needs
• Easier porting between mobile and desktop platforms with full OpenGL ES 2.0 API compatibility
• Ability to query and load a binary for shader program objects to save re-compilation time
• Capability to bind programs individually to programmable stages for programming flexibility
• Higher geometric precision with 64-bit floating-point component vertex shader inputs
• Increased rendering flexibility with multiple viewports for a rendering surface
• Support for new ARB extension introduced with OpenGL 4.1

More on the FirePro performance plug-ins for 3ds Max & AutoCAD

Check out these graphs showing the performance gains using the new FirePro plug-ins developed in collaboration with Autodesk.

AUTOCAD
Note the 130-446% performance boost from the low end FirePro to the mid-range FirePro V7800

3ds MAX
Note the 59-65% performance boost across the FirePro line

FirePro performance plug-ins for AutoCAD 2010, AutoCAD 2011, 3ds Max 2010 and 3ds Max 2011

Along with a recent FirePro V8.773 driver update, AMD today released new plug-ins that provide enhanced performance with AutoCAD 2010, AutoCAD 2011, 3ds Max 2010 and 3ds Max 2011. They also provide significant improvements in visual quality.

Some interesting stats comparing Radeon (consumer) to FirePro (professional) graphics cards using the new plug-ins, benchmarked on AutoCAD with Cadalyst Systems Benchmark 2011:

- Radeon HD 5850 ($280 street)  scored 587
- FirePro V3800 ($107 street) scored 930
- FirePro V5800 ($385 street) scored 1980

Now those are some nice performance differences.  Of course the FirePro cards are also certified for CAD accuracy and precision, not just speed.  The professional cards better handle antialiasing (FSAA and sub-pixel precision), overlay plane support, multiple clipping planes, many layers of transparency, and high polygon counts.

ATI FirePro beta driver 8.76.2 coming soon with 20%-80+% performance gains across CAD and DCC apps

A new AMD blog talks about the upcoming release beta driver version 8.76.2 for ATI FirePro hardware. Highlights include:

• More than 50% increase in performance for ATI FirePro V8800 on the 3ds Max subset of the SPECviewperf 10 benchmark, as well as a 40% gain on the Catia subset, a 20% gain on the Pro E subset and more than 20% gain on the overall composite.
• Across the board performance increases for the entire family of current ATI FirePro graphics on the Lightwave subset of the new SPECviewperf® 11 benchmark, with the entry-level ATI FirePro V3800 achieving up to 62% performance gain and the ultra-high ATI FirePro V8800 achieving up to 81% gain, compared to the previous driver.
• Across the board performance increases for the entire family of current ATI FirePro graphics on the SolidWorks subset of SPECviewperf 11, with the entry-level ATI FirePro V3800 achieving up to 43% performance gain and the ultra high-end ATI FirePro V8800 achieving a 63% gain compared to the previous driver.

OpenGL 4.0 beta drivers released for consumer and FirePro line

AMD has posted a blog “Ready, Willing and Able - AMD Supports OpenGL 3.3 and OpenGL 4.0” announcing the new OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3 beta drivers. The new beta driver fully enables the additional functionality introduced introduced in OpenGL 3.3 on all AMD ATI Radeon, ATI FirePro and ATI FireGL graphics accelerators - released since the spring of 2007. The Radeon HD 5400 Series to the Radeon HD 5900 Series, as well as the FirePro line are fully compatible with the OpenGL 4.0 standard, including tessellation and integration with the OpenCL API, enabling GPU acceleration in future OpenGL applications.

Catalyst drivers for Radeon 5XXX bring CrossFireX + Eyefinity, game profiles and mobility updates

The newly announced Catalyst v10.2 driver for Radeon 5XXX cards, available later today, brings:

- Game profiles - Per-game profiles are being moved out of the drivers, so they can be updated and downloaded to offer better performance to new games when they come out, rather than to wait for the next Catalyst update.
- CrossFireX + Eyefinity - Support for multi-GPU CrossFireX configurations to boost Eyefinity performance
- Ultra Low Power State - Lower-idling on CrossfireX secondary GPUs when not in high-performance gaming mode to significantly reduce power use and heat production
- DisplayPort Audio - If you have one of the new DisplayPort monitors that has speakers, the new driver will route the audio through that single audio/video connection

AMD has also pre-announced the v10.3 driver for release in March that adds further enhancements including:

- Eyefinity customization wizard - an easy-to-use wizard that will allow users to easily adjust layout in order to compensate for monitor bezels, adjust brightness, color and contrast for each display
- 3D Stereo driver hooks - enabling “third-party middleware” vendors to bring more 3D stereoscopic gaming options to consumers by allowing for independent left and right images at 120 Hz
- Focus on mobile GPUs -  Monthly stability, performance and feature enhancements notebooks with ATI mobility chips (obviously to appear in more notebooks)

Update - Extremetech has a good summary of these updates in their article AMD Commits to CrossFireX, Eyefinity, and Stereoscopic 3D with New Catalyst Releases

ATI FirePro Windows 7 drivers now available

The new ATI FirePr/FireGL Unified Driver v8.632 adds support for Windows 7 32- and 64-bit versions. This is timely news following on yesterdays news that Microsoft has released Windows 7 to manufacturing (with PC makers getting the official bits from Microsoft by the end of this week).

Windows 7 is a big deal for Microsoft, but I think the bigger deal for the professional CAD and DCC markets will be DirectX 11 (bundled with Windows 7).  This means it will take advantage of the FirePro GPUs for hardware-accelerated tesselation (meaning more complex models that can be manipulated and modified in real-time) and computer shaders (use of the GPU as a parallel processing solution for things like video processing, image processing, effect physics, advanced renderers like ray-tracing or radiosity, and accelerated production pipelines).