The FireGL 3 graphics card is a high end graphics accelerator intended for the CAD and animation markets. The primary feature
of the FireGL range of cards is good quality, hardware accelerated OpenGL graphics support.
Ownership of the FireGL range of cards has passed through the hands of several different companies
recently, having originally been a product of Diamond Multimedia. The situation seems to have
stabilised, with a company called FGL Graphics (a subsidiary of ATI) now handling the product range.
Hardware
The FireGL 3 card itself is a three quarter length card with a double end plate. The presence of this unusual end plate appears
to be partly to perform the expected function of holding the card's connectors, but also partly to provide a region of fresh,
cooling air for the two large aluminium heat sinks fitted to the chips on the card. One of these heat sinks covers nearly one-third of the area of the card, so good cooling is a requirement.
The card has three connectors mounted on the end plate. Two of these are the connectors for the monitors, being quite unusual
square items. They are called DVI-I Digital connectors, though a pair of adapters are provided to convert these to the more
conventional 15 pin D connector commonly found on standard monitor leads. The third connector is a small round DIN
connector, intended to connect a stereographic display.
The review card was fitted with 128 megabytes of DDR (Double Data Rate) SGRAM video memory, running at 125 megahertz. It employs an
IBM RC1000 256-bit graphics processor, in conjunction with an IBM GT-1000 processor chip. The card needs to be mounted in the AGP
slot of the host computer. The FireGL 3 will support display resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 pixels in 32-bit colour.
The FireGL 3 graphics card reviewed here was provided by Xenon Systems, who are the Australian agents
for the FireGL range of graphic accelerators. It was provided in a Pentium 4 (1.4 gigahertz) system, fitted with 256
megabytes of system memory. The board was fitted in an AGP 4X slot on the review system, but runs better with AGP Pro. System
software was Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional. Obviously, such a high specification system would definitely not interfere with
the FireGL 3 in terms of getting the best possible performance from the card.
Dual Screen Support
The main features of the FireGL 3 display card over the earlier FireGL 2 are the provision of dual monitor support and optional
full screen anti-aliasing of the image. The later card also provides 128 megabytes of graphic memory to the 64 megabytes of
the FireGL 2, on a physically only slightly larger card.
For those who like to run two monitors, the dual screen support of the FireGL 3 is a neater solution than having to mount two
separate graphics cards in a PC, then endeavouring to configure them so they can live together without any hardware conflicts.
It should also offer better performance with a multi-monitor setup, as both cards here are effectively the one card using the
computer's dedicated AGP slot. The dual screen mode is a true double screen, and not a case of two separate monitors each
displaying the same image.
There was good software support provided for the dual monitors, this facility being controlled from custom windows found in the
DISPLAY option on the SETTINGS screen. An image would cover the screens on the two connected monitors, effectively creating a
single wide display screen. Options were available for manipulating several details about how the menus on the composite
screen were displayed. This effectively came down to whether an on-screen window would only display on a single monitor, or
whether the monitors truly acted like a single screen and the window could exist partly on each.
Dual monitors being used as a single wide display screen.
