AMD hopes to ignite the market for high-quality graphics accelerators with its new FirePro duo. The ATI FirePro V5700 and V3700 cards are aimed at a range of arenas, from CAD to medical imaging.

The V5700 features 512MB of frame buffer memory and a 30bit display engine that AMD claimed can produce more than 1bn colours at any given time. The card also has dual link DVI and DisplayPort connections.

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A host of Blu-ray features are supported, including dual streaming and picture-in-picture. The V5700’s also able to offload tasks from the CPU, freeing it up to handle other jobs.

The FirePro V3700 is a lower priced card and only features 256 MB of frame buffer memory, but has two dual-link DVI connectors and VGA mode support on all display outlets.

AMD’s ATI FirePro V5700 and V3700 will both be available in September for $600 (£300/€400) and $100 (£50/€75) respectively. Dell has already announced that both cards will be available in its Precision T7400, T5400, and T3400 desktop workstations.