Review by bittendog for ATI FireGL V5600 – Graphics adapter – FireGL V5600 – PCI Express x16 – 512 MB – DVI
Rating:
The video is breathtaking. For the first time ever, I saw descent into hellfire flames in true 3D without having 3D glasses. It was able to compute parallax trajectories, moving each image pixel in a different direction repeatedly to give the brain the illusion of true 3D using the newest experimental technology, similar to the way the sound appears to keep rising in pitch while only repeating in Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine”, for about twenty minutes before crashing. This was in a Winamp visualization that I gave up on eventually, one that has since been discontinued because almost nobody could get it to work consistently without at least a gig of memory on their card, whereas this one has half a gig. It is powerful enough to run visualizations simultaneously on both my monitors at maximum resolutions extended into both of them through the ATI Catalyst Control Center. It can also work different resolutions on two different sized monitors at the same time without a hitch.

This card is huge, though, extending into the hard drive cables. There are two tiny capacitors on the end that interfere with the cables, and can easily snag in the cables and be broken off, which, of course, ruins things. One must devise a way to prevent their being snagged when installing or working on hard drives or the card, or be EXTREMELY careful.