AMD Announces the Affordable FirePro V4900
AMD announced the FirePro V4900 workstation graphics card that expands the company's product line on the upper end of the entry-level professional graphics market.
The card comes with 1 GB of 128-bit GDDR5 RAM with a memory bandwidth of 64 GB/s. the card integrates 480 stream processing units, two DisplayPort interfaces and one dual-link DVI port to run up to six independent displays simultaneously. AMD says that the maximum power consumption of the card is below 75 watts. DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.2 and OpenCL are supported.
"The AMD FirePro V4900 stands in a league of its own and redefines entry-level professional graphics card capabilities," said Sandeep Gupte, general manager of professional graphics, AMD. "The AMD FirePro V4900 leverages AMD’s most advanced graphics technology, which not only enhances user experience and boosts performance of professional applications, but also features AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology that supports up to six displays4 increasing user productivity."
AMD will be offering the card in workstation systems offered by Dell, Fujitsu and HP. The standalone card has an MSRP of $189.

FirePro are optimized for desktop applications, not games. They are designed to run under high stress loads (such as 3d redering) for long periods of time and remain stable.
Just looked it up myself- here's the answer:
http://www.ehow.com/about_5426830_workstation-graphics-card.html
Drivers, stability, price and support. Also, some vendors intentionally gimp things like FP performance on their desktop cards to differentiate them with the pro cards.
(read a review somewhere)
So does that mean its based on the 6k chip or 7k chip?
Drivers and support, nothing more!
These professional cards are made for real time rendering. The gaming cards not. the gaming cards are for pre-rendered video.
There are charts where a HD5970 is way worse than cheaper FirePro and Quadro cards. Ati firepro v7800 costs like 500 dollars but is WAY better than hd 6990 or gtx 590, in Autodesk and professional software like that.
LolWUT? Gaming cards are made for pre-rendered video?
nVidia and AMD intentionally lock the capabilities which sell FirePro and Quadro (3D design instructions, etc.) on their gaming cards. There're some custom drivers to unlock these instructions on gaming cards, but it's unreliable.
In a gaming card it's the other way around. The FW is optimized for speed and performance over realism and accuracy. The drivers have been optimized for performance and are certified to work on various gaming platforms. In a game your not going to notice pixels being slightly off color, or a shape not being perfectly accurate. The scene is changing so fast that it's better to maintain the pace and visual effects over spending extra time to be precise.
Ultimately, same card but different software package loaded to support it.
1. Abysmal driver support for wider variety of operating systems.
2. No CUDA (as at production level CUDA is the most used GPGPU specification).
The Drivers are optimized for workstation Apps
4???????? Now that doesn't sound very professional. It seems like this guy has been chatting on Facebook or something. It also can be a typo.
I call BS troll. Cadder made a typo in his post (or trolling as well) as it is "Quadro" not "Quadra. I find it highly unlikely that you would say it wrong as well especially if you actually have one of the cards.
If you really did have one and tried contacting support then you would know that it is high level support you get and the repsonse time is really quick. Atleast it has been on the 6 occassionas i've had to use it over the years and much the same for anyone else I know in an industry that uses workstation cards.
These professional cards are made for real time rendering. The gaming cards not. the gaming cards are for pre-rendered video.There are charts where a HD5970 is way worse than cheaper FirePro and Quadro cards. Ati firepro v7800 costs like 500 dollars but is WAY better than hd 6990 or gtx 590, in Autodesk and professional software like that.
LMAO
dumbest thign i ever saw posted on toms.
gamings cards arnt just for prerendered video you moe-ron.
gmaes are rendered in real time too jsut the math behind rendering a game in real time is much differnt than say rendering in auto caod or 3ds max or maya. the ONLY difference with these cards is the software (both firm ware and drivers) and the support.
I know some people that run games on these cards but it's relaly a wast of teh card , reversely , I'm in school for game art design and MOST of my fellow classmates and myself are using gaming cards not pro cards , it works fine for those programs but the work station cards would work better at those programs .
The manufacturers simply lock the hardware on a BIOS or software level so that you as a consumer can't use the gaming card as a professional one (and of course they overcharge you for the 'pro' cards).
The only 'benefit' you see with 'pro' cards is in 3d programs such as AutoCad, LW, 3d Stduio Max, Maya, etc... and even then, the differences are reserved for VIEWPORT previews (not actual rendering that churns out images of scenes - or animations) - or in essence, increased FPS count and higher stability when seeing objects in viewports.
Crashes that occur when using consumer or 'gaming' cards are nothing more than insanely stupid support for those cards on a software level, nothing more.
3d Studio Max started incorporating gpu based rendering in it's later versions, so that final images/animations are done via the GPU AND CPU and not only the CPU.
And for the most part, it can only take advantage of CUDA technology.
AMD has it's own equivalent of CUDA actually which is just as good... but the devs do not use them because Nvidia holds the reigns for the most part when it comes to that 'Nvidia, the way it's MEANT to be played' garbage is one of the examples.