Low-cost workstation graphics cards certainly aren't designed to be gaming racehorses. Rather, they're meant to be good enough for a number of mainstream professional tasks. After the recent launch of AMD's FirePro V3900, we were given an opportunity to find out what such basic cards can do, and how well AMD's entry-level card stacks up against its competition.
The FirePro V3900 is aggressively priced compared to what you're probably used to seeing for a workstation-oriented board, currently selling for about $110. According to AMD, the card competes against Nvidia’s Quadro 400, which is offered at a similar price. We decided to benchmark not only those two cards, but also Nvidia's Quadro 600, a Radeon HD 6570, a GeForce GT 430, a GeForce GT 440, and the brand-new Radeon HD 7750. We know those other cards weren't designed to contend in the professional space. However, we're curious as to how they'll do, given similar specifications.
Good Old Friends in New Clothes
AMD's FirePro V3900 features a Turks-based GPU and is quite similar to the Radeon HD 6570. The previously-launched FirePro V4900 sports a more complex Turks-based GPU and is more easily compared to the Radeon HD 6670. According to AMD’s roadmap, Turks will continue to persist until 2015, which is all the more reason to put this little V3900 through its paces.
Of course, we know that the Turks GPU is a descendant of Barts, which powers the Radeon HD 6800-series cards, and which itself is a descendant of Cypress, the GPU driving AMD's older Radeon HD 5800-series cards. Turks, however, only has six SIMD engines, each of which consists of sixteen thread processors. Each thread processor has five stream processors (ALUs). The SIMD blocks have four texture units. And thus, a Turks chip has a grand total of 24 texture units and 480 ALUs. The DRAM is attached via two 64-bit memory interfaces, for an aggregate 128-bit bus. Moreover, the two rendering back-ends of the chip sport four color ROPs, for a total of eight.
| AMD FirePro V3900 | AMD Radeon HD 6570 | Nvidia Quadro 400 | Nvidia Quadro 600 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stream Processors | 480 (96 5D) | 480 (96 5D) | 48 (1D) | 96 (1D) |
| ROPs | 8 | 8 | 4 | 8 |
| GPU Clock | 650 MHz | 650 MHz | 450 MHz | 640 MHz |
| Memory Clock | 900 MHz | 800 MHz | 770 MHz | 800 MHz |
| Interface | 128-bit | 128-bit | 64-bit | 128-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 28.8 GB/s | 28.8 GB/s | 12.3 GB/s | 25.6 GB/s |
| Video Memory Size | 1 GB GDDR3 | 1 GB GDDR3 | 512 MB GDDR3 | 1 GB GDDR3 |
| Shader Model | 5.0 | 5.0 | 4.0 | 4.0 |
| TDP | approx. 50 W | approx. 50 W | approx. 32 W | approx. 40 W |
| Street Price | $110 | $50 | $95 | $145 |
On paper, the V3900's smaller Turks chip looks more impressive than the GT216 on Nvidia's Quadro 400. It even looks a little better than the GF108 on the Quadro 600. We'll test to see if this translates into the performance of real-world tasks.
Also, it's no secret that the higher performance of workstation cards versus their gamer-oriented brethren in professional applications is mostly a result of optimized drivers. So, a comparison with the FirePro's desktop equivalent is particularly apropos as well.
FirePro V3900 Vs. Radeon HD 6570
AMD's FirePro V3900 and Radeon HD 6570 have similar PCBs and the same Turks chip, which begs the age-old question: Can the consumer card be converted? Once upon a time, you could flash a gaming card's BIOS with a workstation board's firmware and the driver would be none the wiser. So, we decided to try the same thing here.
We obtained a consumer-grade card with similar technical specifications and a closely matching PCB layout from HIS. The only differences are a modified cooler and an added analog video connector. Other than PCB color, the cards look very similar up front.
The backs do too.
The FirePro V3900's memory is clocked 100 MHz faster. Just to be safe, then, we tested the Radeon's RAM overclocked to 900 MHz to make sure it'd take the higher frequency without stability issues. Most other on-board components are not only running at the same speeds, but are even the same make and model.
The V3900's PCB is manufactured by Oriental Printed Circuits Ltd. Some AMD retail partners merely relabel their cards. HIS' board, however, is manufactured by Sheng Hua Electronics (Hui Yang) Ltd.
BIOS Mod
After establishing that the two cards feature similar hardware, we flash the Radeon HD 6570 in DOS using a copy of the FirePro V3900's BIOS. Although the PC boots and Windows launches, AMD's Catalyst Pro Control Center doesn't recognize our counterfeit. Evidently, we'd need to do a bit more software hacking to get this to work.

Even though modding the drivers by patching a few bytes in the right spots (editing the SSID and Subsys entries) gets the card recognized, this breaks the overclocking tool and hardware-based video acceleration. It even causes a performance hit in DirectX 9 through DirectX 11. Although we do see an increase in OpenGL performance in a few applications, we don't consider the hack to be worth the problems it introduces.
Bottom Line
Gone are the days, it seems, of joining two on-board bridges, or simply re-flashing a firmware to turn a gamer-oriented board into a professional-level card. We were able to soft-mod our Radeon HD 6570, turning it into a FirePro V3900, though side-effects were introduced in the process. Rather than comparing our hobbled Radeon to the FirePro, we flashed the desktop card back to its original BIOS and allowed it to compete on its own merits, allowing us to contrast AMD's mainstream and professional driver packages instead. Since the cards are almost identical, aside from a 100 MHz difference on the memory, any significant performance gap is going to have to be attributable to software-based optimizations.
Our Test Rig
In order to benchmark our workstation-oriented cards in an appropriate environment, we used one of our dual-CPU test rigs. Going forward, this new rig will be the reference system for the Tom's Hardware workstation graphics cards charts, which we'll begin publishing later this year.
| Technical Data | |
|---|---|
| CPU | 2 x AMD Opteron 4238 (Valencia), 12 Cores total (6 Bulldozer modules/12 integer cores), CPU Clock 3.30 GHz, Socket C32, 95 W |
| CPU Coolers | 2 x Noctua NH-U12DO A3 |
| Motherboard | Asus KCMA-D8 |
| Memory | 16 GB Kingston DDR3-1333 ECC |
| Hard Disks | Kingston V200 480 GB 2 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB |
| Power Supply | Antec HCP-850 80 PLUS Gold |
| Case | Antec P280 |
| Operating System | Dual-Boot System: Windows 7 x64 Ultimate (used for this article) Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008 RC 2 |
| Benchmarks | SPECviewperf 11 (Benchmark suite, 1920x1200) |
| Graphics Cards and Drivers | AMD FirePro V3900 (Catalyst Pro 8.911.3.1 WHQL) AMD Radeon HD 6570 (Catalyst 12.1) AMD Radeon HD 7750 (Catalyst 12.1) Nvidia Quadro 400 (Quadro/Tesla 276.52 WHQL) Nvidia Quadro 600 (Quadro/Tesla 276.52 WHQL) Nvidia GeForce 430 (GeForce 285.62 WHQL) Nvidia GeForce 440 (GeForce 285.62 WHQL) |
Benchmark: EnSight
EnSight runs really well on AMD's brand-new Radeon HD 7750, which takes the top spot. This is a reasonably priced card able to beat workstation-oriented competition, even without professional-grade drivers. The FirePro V3900 takes second place, while the mainstream gamer cards from Nvidia easily keep up with the company's pro boards. AMD's Radeon HD 6570 brings up the rear.

Benchmark: Catia
The FirePro V3900 dominates in Catia. And once anti-aliasing is enabled, the new card extends its lead. Even with 8x anti-aliasing turned on, the V3900’s performance barely takes a hit. Meanwhile, the significantly more expensive Quadro 600's performance collapses. None of the gaming-oriented boards can compete with the professional cards.
Catia triggered some bugs in the Radeon HD 6570's Catalyst driver, preventing us from posting benchmark results for that product.

Benchmark: Maya
The FirePro V3900 is more than twice as fast as any other card, except when we enable 8x anti-aliasing (though it still has a substantial lead).
Nvidia's Quadro cards are next, followed by the mainstream Radeon cards. As anti-aliasing is turned up, the Radeon HD 6570 starts to close the gap. We don't have anti-aliased scores for the Radeon HD 7750 because AMD needed our sample back before we could generate results. The low-end GeForce cards are completely outclasses here, basically unusable in Maya.

Benchmark: Pro/ENGINEER
For the first time in our story, both Quadro cards take a slight lead over the FirePro V3900. With increasing levels of anti-aliasing, the V3900 pulls within reach, and then ahead of the Quadro 400. It can't quite catch the Quadro 600, though.
All consumer-grade cards are outclassed in this test.

Benchmark: Siemens Teamcenter Visualization Mockup
What starts out as a close finish between the FirePro V3900 and Quadro 600 becomes more decisive as anti-aliasing settings are raised, up until 8x AA, where the two finish closer again. AMD's Radeon HD 6570 bests Nvidia's Quadro 400 at the highest levels of anti-aliasing, while the other consumer-grade cards are practically unusable.

Power Dissipation
Subjected to a heavy workload, all of our tested boards draw less than 50 W. At such modest power levels, even low-profile cards are easy to cool. Idle power consumption of 10 W or less is almost negligible when you consider the target market for these products. Nvidia's Quadro cards stand out as particularly power-friendly. Under load, power consumption roughly corresponds to performance. AMD's FirePro V3900 is the fastest offering, but it also uses the most power.

Sound Level
In this story, we're measuring acoustics from a distance of 20” (50 cm) perpendicular to the installed cards. Although these small boards are rated at low TDPs and to not dissipate a lot of heat, their small cooling fans become quite audible, even under a modest workload. The sound levels of the FirePro V3900 and the Quadro 600 are almost identical, both at idle and at full load. However, the inexpensive consumer-grade GeForce cards have more aggressive fan speed profiles, resulting in higher noise levels.


Summary and Conclusion
Our benchmark test shows that the FirePro V3900 is a viable OpenGL-oriented accelerator. It dominates the similarly-priced Quadro 400, and even bests the more expensive Quadro 600 in most scenarios, sometimes dramatically so.
Workstation Card or Consumer Card?
We included the V3900’s desktop cousin, the Radeon HD 6570, and Nvidia's entry-level GeForce GT 430, which shares the GF108 chip with its workstation sibling, Quadro 600. Consequently, we see some massive performance dips attributable to the consumer-grade drivers. You're asked to pay a notable premium for workstation cards built on familiar graphics processors and their specially-optimized drivers. But even if that deliberate segmentation seems excessive, for folks whose jobs depend on good performance and validation in money-making applications, paying the extra money is probably justified.
Image quality is something that can't be quantified using the bar graphs from a benchmark. However, the mainstream gaming cards do have noticeably inferior image quality. We ran across plenty of examples of edges that should have been hidden, but weren't (see the picture above), which you simply don't see from workstation cards. The professional hardware also renders wire frame models and textured areas much better. If you use CAD software for a living and want the best results, you really should be using a FirePro or Quadro, and not a Radeon or GeForce. If you're just experimenting with professional software and don't require professional quality, you may get by with a consumer-grade card.
Closing Thoughts
The FirePro V3900 is a fitting successor for the V3800. Priced at $110, we consider it to be a good value in the entry-level workstation graphics card space. As long as you're primarily looking at mostly static CAD images, this card is a good alternative to the low-end Quadro cards, both with respect to price and performance.
We aren't going out on a limb when we call it a price/performance leader for its segment. However, we must stress that the graphics processing potential of this card is comparably low-end compared to the Radeon HD 6570 with which most folks are familiar. Thus, the FirePro V3900 may be unsuitable for more demanding professional workloads, such as complex CAD animations. In the end, you need to take the application software, the use case, and your budget into account when making your purchase decision. If you don't need high-end graphics performance, a low-power, low-profile card like the V3900 may be the right buy for you.























