Introduction
Recently ATI announced the Mobility FireGL 7800 chip
which is positioned as their first "Mobile
Workstation" graphics chip, and builds
on the solid Mobility Radeon 7500 core
we recently previewed.
During the end of November Ryan and I met in New
York City with Chris Hook and Darren McPhee
from ATI's Mobile Business Unit for a demonstration
of the new Mobility FireGL 7800 chip in
action. For those of you that have
already read our
Mobility Radeon 7500 Preview from August,
you'll already know much of the basic specifications
of the Mobility FireGL 7800, as the core
architecture is the same. You can
expect the 7800 to generally have faster
core and memory clocking, and given the
target market of niche high-speed mobile
workstations, will sport a 128bit memory
interface with 64MB of ram.
Among the technologies that transfer to the 7800
from the 7500 are ATI's
POWERPLAY
technology. This includes the clock gating
and dynamic voltage and clock speed modification
technologies, which you can find more details
on at
this page in the Mobility Radeon 7500
Preview. Also noted on that page is
the advanced memory interface, which the
7800 inherits as well. All mobile
workstations equipped with the Mobility
FireGL 7800 will be using 64MB of ram with
the 128bit memory interface for top performance.
ATI already leads the mobile arena in terms
of market share. With the Mobility FireGL
7800 graphics chipset they continue to be
aggressive and target future areas of growth.
ATI's mobile division knows what the market
wants and is providing the ProGL market
with a great performing chipset. The FireGL
branding gives the chip a large following
of Pro graphics users who trust the companies
product.
So, what actually differentiates the Mobility
FireGL 7800 from the Mobility Radeon 7500?