AMD's RV770 graphics processor, so well-known for its use in gaming variants of the Radeon HD 4870, is now being used in the company's workstation graphics cards. At the same time, AMD has stepped away from its well-known FireGL brand; the most current professional graphics adapters now carry a FirePro label. Tom's Hardware has been lucky enough to score an early production model, the FirePro V8700, for comprehensive benchmarking.
The FirePro boards also mark a complete switchover by AMD from 80 to 55 nanometer manufacturing technology. Buyers should rejoice in that this means reduced power consumption, and correspondingly quieter cooling fans. But can a smaller die size and related technological advancements also improve performance?
Price is certainly a key factor here. At a price of $930 at Newegg, the V8700 is an astounding $284 cheaper than its predecessor, the FireGL V8600. Until this product hit the market, AMD's ATI division had always placed great emphasis on maintaining price-performance ratios across similar products of its own design.
Nvidia has historically been able to outperform similar ATI products at the highest end of its product offerings. These days, Nvidia buyers must be willing to settle for performance parity instead--for example, see our previous article, "Pro Graphics: Seven Cards Compared".
It's not completely clear to us why ATI has suddenly dropped the GL suffix from its Fire brand names, replacing that portion of that name with "Pro" instead. In discussions with product managers at ATI, we were repeatedly informed that "Pro" stands for "Professional" and thus better speaks to the goals of the workstation graphics group. Nevertheless, we believe that it can be risky to mess around with established brand names. Perhaps it makes more sense to see this move as a way of de-emphasizing differences between OpenGL and DirectX technologies? Either way, ATI has decided to switch its branding completely from FireGL to FirePro.
Market Overview
| Workstation Graphics Cards and their Mainstream Equivalents | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workstation- Model | Chip- Basis | Fab | Mainstream- Equivalent | Graphics RAM | 3-Pin Stereo | Display Port |
| ATI FirePro V8700 | RV770 | 55 nm | Radeon HD 4870 | 1024 MB GDDR5 | yes | yes |
| ATI FireGL V8600 | R600 | 80 nm | Radeon HD 2900 XT | 1024 MB GDDR4 | yes | no |
| ATI FireGL V7700 | RV670 | 55 nm | Radeon HD 3850 | 512 MB GDDR4 | yes | yes |
| ATI FireGL V7600 | R600 | 80 nm | Radeon HD 2900 | 512 MB GDDR3 | yes | no |
| ATI FireGL V5600 | RV630 | 65 nm | Radeon HD 2600 XT | 512 MB GDDR4 | no | no |
| Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 | G80 | 90 nm | GeForce 8800 | 1536 MB GDDR3 | yes | no |
| Nvidia Quadro FX 4600 | G80 | 90 nm | GeForce 8800 | 768 MB GDDR3 | yes | no |
| Nvidia Quadro FX 1700 | G84 | 80 nm | GeForce 8600 | 512 MB DDR2 | yes | no |
| Workstation- Model | Memory Bandwidth | DirectX | OpenGL | Shader Model | Core Clock | Memory Clock | Pixel and Vertex Processing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATI FirePro V8700 | 115 GB/s | 10.1 | 2.1 | 4.0 | 750 MHz | 900 MHz | 800 SPUs |
| ATI FireGL V8600 | 111 GB/s | 10 | 2.1 | 4.0 | 675 MHz | 868 MHz | 320 SPUs |
| ATI FireGL V7700 | 72.0 GB/s | 10.1 | 2.1 | 4.0 | 775 MHz | 1125 MHz | 320 SPUs |
| ATI FireGL V7600 | 51.0 GB/s | 10 | 2.1 | 4.0 | 500 MHz | 510 MHz | 320 SPUs |
| ATI FireGL V5600 | 35.1 GB/s | 10 | 2.1 | 4.0 | 800 MHz | 1100 MHz | 120 SPUs |
| Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 | 76.8 GB/s | 10 | 2.1 | 4.0 | 600 MHz | 800 MHz | 112 SPUs |
| Nvidia Quadro FX 4600 | 67.2 GB/s | 10 | 2.1 | 4.0 | 500 MHz | 700 MHz | 112 SPUs |
| Nvidia Quadro FX 1700 | 12.8 GB/s | 10 | 2.1 | 4.0 | 460 MHz | 400 MHz | 32 SPUs |
Legend: SPUs = Stream Processing Units
In this context, we also think it's wise to describe a couple of interesting software initiatives. When it comes to Nvidia's CUDA (Computer Unified Device Architecture) we can offer a comprehensive article. On the other hand, the competition offers its own AMD Stream Computing. We dig into this more deeply on the next page, and do likewise for the ATI FirePro V8700 hardware details.
When it comes to hardware, only a few items differentiate this graphics card from the Radeon HD 4870 model that targets gamers. As we describe on the following page of this story, the biggest differences between the V8700 and the HD 4870 relate to the drivers.
In everyday use, the card's ventilation made a very positive impression. It's much quieter than earlier solutions of the same caliber from ATI.
The new DisplayPort graphics interface also appears to have captured ATI's fancy, which probably explains why the company decided to include two such ports on the V8700. We aren't sure we understand why, because so few monitors currently support this interface--the majority of high-end monitors use DVI, and you still run into an occasional VGA-only model even today. Here's a sampling of the monitors that support DisplayPort:
- HP DreamColor LP2480zx
- Dell UltraSharp 3008 WFP
- Eizo FlexScan S2432W-H
The V8700 warranty provides three years of coverage, including access to a dedicated technical support staff that specializes in workstation systems. Mainstream Radeon cards for gamers give nowhere near this level of protection.
The FirePro V8700 ships with the same Catalyst Control Center (CCC) that comes with the Radeon HD 4870. In fact, one notices hardly any obvious differences between these two products. At first glance, the only obvious difference is the additional menu item entitled "Workstation." A single click on any of these thumbnails will open a picture gallery with larger images.
One of the nicest driver features is automatic application recognition, which ATI calls AutoDetect. This software seeks to apply optimal settings for all of the workstation applications it finds on a particular machine. This turns out to be a valuable capability, especially to those users who work with numerous graphics-heavy applications. This is one particular area where Nvidia has some serious catching up to do.
(Ed.: It's worth noting that, while you see CrossFire connectors in the images on the previous page, AMD's FirePro cards currently don't offer any benefits to running in CrossFire mode. Nvidia, on the other hand, offers SLI support for its Quadro FX boards, enabling accelerated rendering, multi-display mode, or higher capacities for FSAA. This is one area where AMD has some serious catching up to do.)
Tom’s Hardware offers benchmark results for the following graphics cards:
| ATI FireGL/FirePro-series | Nvidia Quadro FX-series |
|---|---|
| ATI FirePro V8700 | |
| ATI FireGL V8650 | Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 |
| ATI FireGL V7700 | Nvidia Quadro FX 4600 |
| ATI FireGL V7600 | Nvidia Quadro FX 1700 |
| ATI FireGL V7300 | Nvidia Quadro FX 5500 |
| ATI FireGL V7200 | Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 |
| ATI FireGL V7100 | Nvidia Quadro FX 3500 |
| ATI FireGL V5600 | Nvidia Quadro FX 570 |
| ATI FireGL V5200 | Nvidia Quadro FX 370 |
| ATI FireGL V3600 | Nvidia Quadro FX 1500 |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 (2.93 GHz) |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | Asus P5W64 WS Pro (rev 1.01, BIOS 0802) with Intel 975X Chipset |
| System memory (RAM) | 4 GB (4 x 1 GB) Corsair XMS2-6400 (CM2X10246400-C3) with CL 4.0-4-4-12 |
| Optical drive | Samsung SH-D163A , SATA150 |
| Power supply | Zalman, ATX 2.01, 510 W |
| Hard disk | Western Digital WD1500ADFD 150 GB |
| OS | Windows XP Service Pack 3 |
|---|---|
| 3D API Update | DirectX 9.0c |
| Intel Chipset drivers | Version 8.3.1.1009 |
| ATI FireGL Drivers | Catalyst 8.453.1-081008 |
| Nvidia Quadro Drivers | Quadro 181.20 + Maxtreme 11 |
| SPEC Benchmarks Settings | Application settings according to SPEC Project Group rules, driver using application optimizations if available |
| SPEC Benchmarks Used | SpecViewperf 10.0 SPECapc 3ds Max 9 (3D Studio Max) SPECapc Solidworks 2007 SPECapc Maya 6.5 |














After our latest round of OpenGL workstation articles, we received numerous questions about why we didn't include a gaming series in our testing. It seems that not all of our readers were ready to accept our claims that gaming cards run more slowly than workstation graphics cards, especially where professional applications are concerned. That's why we include a comparison with hard numbers instead of vague generalizations in this story.
| Performance Comparison: Viewperf 10 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Graphics adapter | Radeon HD 4870 | FirePro V8700 |
| Chip | RV770 | RV770 |
| Memory bus | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Core Takt | 750 MHz | 750 MHz |
| Memory clock | 900 MHz | 850 MHz |
| Driver | Catalyst 9.1 | FirePro 8.543 |
| 3dsmax-04 (3D Studio Max) | 23.35 | 44.23 |
| Catia-02 | 17.9 | 44.95 |
| Ensight-03 | 27.58 | 46.96 |
| Maya-02 | 40.12 | 240.2 |
| Proe-04 (Pro/Engineer) | 13.82 | 45.39 |
| SW-01 (Solidworks) | 30.75 | 103.33 |
| Tcvis-01 (UGS Teamcenter Visualization) | 8.15 | 37.78 |
| Ugnx-01 (UGS NX) | 16.64 | 56.93 |
As you can clearly see, the ATI driver programmers have done an amazing job. The two models' hardware is 99% identical, and yet the FirePro adapter completely outclasses the cheaper Radeon gaming card. The most extreme case in point is Maya, where the FirePro V8700 is six times faster than the Radeon HD 4870.
We also decided to investigate if there were visible differences in picture quality between the two models. On a basic Windows desktop we discovered no discrepancies, but as soon as you load a professional graphics application such as Maya or 3ds Max and import a complex 3D model, things change completely. When using the Radeon, you simply have to accept that wire frames will peek out of shaded surfaces all over the place, and that significant clipping occurs as numerous objects are viewed or animated. These phenomena simply don't occur when using the FirePro. Bottom line: those who seek to be frugal with expensive workstation applications should not fall prey to false economies.
After careful evaluation of the benchmark results, we conclude that the ATI FirePro V8700 is just a hair faster in several categories than its predecessor, the V8600.
Looking at the big picture level, we don't see any sweeping or major performance improvements from this new hardware. Nevertheless, this latest ATI offering makes a very good showing against the Quadro FX 5600, our previous performance champion. Given all of these observations, the pricing on this card makes it a very good deal for the money, even though a lot of money is involved. By way of comparison, the recently released Nvidia Quadro FX 5800 goes for an astounding $3,150, and the FX 5600 at $2,700 isn't exactly cheap either.
That's why we can recommend the ATI FirePro V8700 as an ideal product for demanding all-around graphics professionals, without any doubts or hesitation whatsoever.
For more information on professional workstation graphics performance, please check out our workstation graphics charts to see where the latest cards stand.







