Looking at our benchmark results, it’s clear which card comes out on top: Nvidia’s Quadro 5000 is superior to AMD’s FirePro V8800 in almost every benchmark, usually by a clear margin. Based on their mainstream equivalents, we wouldn’t have expected such a great performance disparity between these two graphics boards. After all, AMD's offering is built on an excellent modern design, though it seems to have trouble living up to its performance potential in a workstation environment.
Indeed, we don't think that it's the hardware to blame. After all, the Radeon HD 5870 is faster than the GeForce GTX 465. Rather, it's AMD’s driver at fault. While they are stable, they are apparently not very well optimized yet, holding the V8800 back. This isn’t just the case compared to Nvidia's current flagship. The V8800 should have been able to outpace its own predecessor by a much larger margin. AMD's best approach would be to commit more resources to its driver team to rectify the situation.
Nvidia’s newest software package grants the Quadro 5000 a clear lead in the synthetic benchmark SPECviewperf 11. While the Nvidia card also comes out ahead of the AMD board in real-world benchmarks, the margins are not as wide as the synthetic suite would imply. 3ds Max is the one exception, with the previous-gen Quadro FX 4800 beating not only its contemporary FirePro V8700, but the new V8800 as well. We’re happy to see that Nvidia has optimized its drivers for performance in several applications, which is something that AMD has been implementing in its own drivers for a while now. As a result, there is less need to manually adjust software-based settings when using an Nvidia card.
Looking at the two competitors from a "value for the money" perspective, Nvidia certainly appears to be the premium choice, both where performance and cost are concerned. Its faster card is naturally more expensive. Meanwhile, AMD prices its cards at a level that is in line with its capabilities. In other words, the AMD cards are less expensive and still offer respectable performance, but they’re not the fastest models out there.
Depending on the route you go, pricing may not be as much of an issue. While workstation graphics cards can be bought separately, the majority are sold as part of a preconfigured workstation computer from companies like Dell (Precision line) or Hewlett-Packard (z800), where the customer can choose the components. In the context of an entire workstation, the cost of a graphics card is only a small part of the final sum.
- Introduction
- Comparisons And Applications
- Nvidia Quadro 5000: Overview
- Nvidia Quadro 5000: Features, Connectors, And Driver
- ATI FirePro V8800: Overview
- ATI FirePro V8800: Features, Connectors, And Driver
- Test Configuration
- Benchmark Results: SPECapc Autodesk 3D Studio Max 9 1.2
- Benchmark Results: SPECapc Autodesk Maya 2009
- Benchmark Results: SPECapc Newtek LightWave 9.6
- Benchmark Results: SPECviewperf 11
- Conclusion

For someone who doesn't do 3-D design these benchmarks are kinda confusing.
For someone who doesn't do 3-D design these benchmarks are kinda confusing.
(or have I sped-read past the reason why
Hence why I'm selling my HD5770 and getting a GTX460. Much as I like their hardware, ATI sucks balls on drivers...this card won't even shine on M&B and BF2 is a nightmare.
Why do you even want to compare 2 different cards that have different price range ? At least in my country GTX460 costs almost twice as much as 5770. I wonder why nobody can force Nvidia or AMD to bring the workstation optimization found in Quadro - FirePRO drivers to normal cards ... we all know about the past Quadro mods from normal gaming cards ... most of the time all that differes between the 2 cards is amount of memory.
Because then Nvidia wouldn't have their Quadro lines would they?
It's mostly for money, they just change a product a bit and market it as a completely different thing, this rakes in more money, and i know you can turn GTX2** Series card's to Quatro's because iv'e turned my GTX285 into one before.
what teh ehck you mean ? lol i'min school for gameart design work in 3ds max 2010 all teh time, and i still can;t make much sense of tom's benches here , are tehy mesuring in render time or what ?? who the f--- they get the scroes ect ect , i want to see actual render times , would i benfit at all , if i replaced my gaming card with one of these ? sorry toms but epic fail on this comparison this time , why on earth you show 3ds max render tiems for comercial card benches but not work station cards is beyond me. just makes no sense, especially sicne consumer graphic cards DO NOT make a damn difference in 3ds max because when you use a comercial vid card all renders are done on the cpu not the gpu.
A true statement if i ever heard one, since AMD merged ATI and fired lots of ATI personnel.
what is it, not what is it more or less