AMD's ATI FirePro V8800 succeeds the FirePro V8700. Going only by the number of shader cores the V8800 is able to muster, you’d think there should be no competition. At first glance, the GPU’s 1600 shaders would indicate impressive performance potential. By comparison, Nvidia's 352 CUDA cores sound downright paltry. However, as our benchmarks will show, it’s not just about how many shaders you’ve got, it’s how you use them. At the end of the day, whether the cores are called CUDA or Stream says nothing about their capabilities.
As mentioned, the FirePro V8800 is closely related to the Radeon HD 5870. Both are built around the Cypress XT GPU, also known as RV870. Like Nvidia, AMD artificially hobbles its Radeon-class desktop cards through the driver, ensuring that only FirePro models will offer top performance in workstation scenarios. While a Radeon may seem like the less expensive choice, the upshot is that it’s a less-than-ideal card for a workstation.
How closely are these two cards related, then? Superficially, the Radeon HD 5870 and the FirePro V8800 are easy to tell apart simply by the product names printed on their shrouds and the model numbers on the PCB. Also, AMD has opted to rely completely on DisplayPort connections for its professional model, while the Radeon HD 5870 still comes with two DVI outputs and an HDMI connector as well. However, even a practiced eye would have trouble telling the two cards apart based only on their board layouts.
As expected, the ATI Fire Pro V8800 uses lower clock speeds than its desktop sibling. Again, the following table provides an easy comparison.
| Specifications | FirePro V8800 | Radeon HD 5870 |
|---|---|---|
| Chip | Cypress XT (RV870) | Cypress XT (RV870) |
| Memory | 2048 MB | 1024 MB |
| Core Clock Rate | 825 MHz | 850 MHz |
| Memory Clock Rate | 1150 MHz | 1200 MHz |
ATI has launched several workstation cards this year. These include the following models.
- ATI FirePro V8800 (2 GB GDDR5, Cypress XT / RV870)
- ATI FirePro V7800 (2 GB GDDR5, Cypress Pro / RV870)
- ATI FirePro V5800 (1 GB GDDR5, Juniper XT / RV840)
- ATI FirePro V4800 (1 GB GDDR5, Redwood XT / RV830)
- ATI FirePro V3800 (1 GB GDDR3, Redwood XT / RV830)
- 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