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.


- Meet AMD's FirePro V3900
- Can We Turn A Radeon HD 6570 Into A FirePro V3900?
- Test System And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: EnSight
- Benchmark Results: Catia
- Benchmark Results: LightWave
- Benchmark Results: Maya
- Benchmark Results: Pro/ENGINEER
- Benchmark Results: SolidWorks
- Benchmark Results: Siemens Teamcenter Visualization Mockup
- Benchmark Results: Siemens NX
- Power Consumption And Noise
- FirePro V3900: Faster Than Quadro, Still Entry-Level

Just curious
CAD apps like AutoCAD had Optimized code to run better on Professional Video Cards because the Optimized code in the Drivers.. Unlike Gaming Video Cards which has Optimized codes for Games but not on this CAD apps..
Just for the heck of it, and also to answer the question:
- Which card is the better choice for my work station if I'd also like to run a game or two during the lunch break?
This travesty needs to stop.
I'd especially like to see some benchmarks on mid-range pro cards.
Also, same question as above, can I use a Profession CAD graphics card along side a gaming card and get CAD benefits on one monitor and gaming on the other.
Unless your motherboard supports PCI Express slot switch off via software you can't. Even if it would, you would need to restart. Plus knowing AMD driver compatibility and reliability I wouldn't even hope atm. If you are gaming a lot and doing a lot of 3D, question is, what is more important to you, games or 3D content creation? If you are just beginner and doing CAD for fun, you will get by with gaming GPU. Otherwise, you must be making money on your projects and you should afford mid-high GPU for CAD.
Holly cow, you weren't kidding when you said 'Entry Level', this is more like 'Impoverished Level.'
To me an entry level are sub-$400 cards; nVidia Quadro 2000 series and AMD FirePro v5800. Obviously, Pro GPU's are tailored for their use.
Key word is support. Try to reach support with your 7 series GPU and then try the same when you are professional CAD user with CAD dedicated FirePro.
Blender is a free tool. Hardly AMD would be spending money to optimise for freeware.
its not about optimization for a free tool.. the cost of the tool isn't relevant. it is probably the most used tool in the graphical modelling/rendering world. hence a benchmark would be nice. Like i said, not everyone is build 3d engineering schematics with CAD.
Blender may well be a free tool, but it is amazingly powerful and many large companies use it with their own UI and plugins for very large projects. It is used from everything from movies to video game design, and it would be very nice to see how it stacks up.
Still, if you are making any amount of money doing this kind of work I am pretty sure you would be spending a minimum of $250 on your card, and likely somewhere in the $500-1000 range because it is the bottleneck of your productivity and the main determining factor on how many projects a person can do in a year.
Lastly, I would love to see how this card scales on different hardware to see how much was the $100 GPU, vs how much was due to running a duel CPU setup