Nvidia sure didn't waste any time introducing its Fermi architecture to the workstation space. Its Quadro 5000 is one of the first models to use the company's GF100 graphics processor. How does this card stack up against ATI’s flagship FirePro V8800?
The first half of this year felt like Nvidia was taking a time-out or a nap, leaving both its third-party board vendors and customers impatient (BFG, of course, paid the ultimate price). It seemed the company was content to keep creatively renaming its desktop graphics chips, and thus sticking with its then-current portfolio.
Meanwhile, AMD launched its entire line of DirectX 11-compatible Radeon HD 5000-series cards, literally from top to bottom.
Finally, after several delays, Nvidia brought its own DirectX 11 GPU to market, officially called GF100 and based on the Fermi architecture.
The first cards to employ the new design were called the GeForce GTX 480, GeForce GTX 470, and GeForce GTX 465, and all of them were aimed at the gaming enthusiast. Now, Nvidia is introducing a workstation-class card belonging to the Quadro line. Again, AMD enjoys a bit of a lead here as well, having already updated its FirePro line of professional graphics cards in late spring.
That sets the stage for today’s comparison in which we will pit Nvidia’s new Quadro 5000 against AMD's flagship ATI FirePro V8800, comparing both cards to previous-generation parts as well. Since some of our readers may not be familiar with workstation graphics, allow us to provide a frame of reference by comparing them to their mainstream gaming brethren.
The Quadro 5000 is based on Nvidias GF100 GPU and contains 352 shader cores, making it more or less a twin of the GeForce GTX 465. The main differences between the two relate to the memory subsystem and the clock frequencies. AMD's FirePro V8800 is built around the company's Cypress XT (RV870), the same GPU powering its Radeon HD 5870.
So, going into this comparison, what should our expectations be? Comparisons between the gaming versions of these cards show them going head-to-head in many cases, with AMD taking the lead in some cases and Nvidia in others, depending on the game, benchmark, and settings. In the past, this sort of pattern has translated quite well into the workstation world. Will this hold true here as well, or will we see a clear winner emerge?
When it unveiled its Fermi architecture, Nvidia repeatedly stressed that this design was not developed expressly for the gaming market. Instead, the company strove to create a design that could also target the workstation segment, as well as HPC markets. Today‘s test will also show whether Nvidia achieves this goal.
Before we dive into the benchmarks, we’ll take a closer look at the contenders, sizing up Nvidia’s Quadro 5000 and the ATI FirePro V8800. We’ll also consider their respective fields.
- 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