In the end, benchmarks like SPECviewperf 12 can only give us a snapshot of workstation-oriented graphics card performance, and they’ll never cover the entire range of applications, either. Still, this is a long-overdue update to a popular suite of tests. The inclusion of up-to-date professional software from a number of different fields makes it easier for us to estimate the performance of today's FirePro and Quadro boards.
Don't read these results as gospel, though. Eight titles with a handful of sub-tests aren't enough for judging a product fairly and completely, particularly when you're talking about the lower-end models that get brutalized by taxing geometry and the memory bandwidth demands applied by deliberately-complex workloads. In fact, for every market where workstation graphics are used, there are unique and specific needs that can't be accounted for in a general collection of tests.
SPECviewperf 12’s design is, and always has been, focused on the upper-middle and high-end segments. Think about that before writing off less expensive offerings as insufficient. Their target segments are barely, if at all, represented by this benchmark.
It'd be nice to shirk the eternal FirePro versus Quadro debate and simply let the benchmark results and screenshots speak for themselves. But really, both AMD and Nvidia have done their homework, and the products we tested don’t have any obvious flaws or weaknesses.
AMD, in particular, has noticeably improved its standing in the workstation graphics card market, increasing share with its FirePro boards. There are still a lot of professional applications lacking corresponding optimized drivers, particularly outside of the titles in SPECviewperf 12. But the list of those that are officially supported keeps growing.
Moreover, AMD's price/performance ratio in the low- and mid-range segments is already appealing, and we're not seeing a push to offer more value in the high-end space. That's where the company might be able to steal away some of Nvidia's business, especially under the titles really well-optimized in the drivers. Although this is bad news for Nvidia, the winner of a close race is always going to be you.
Bottom Line
SPECviewperf 12 might not be perfect, but perfection is almost impossible to achieve when it comes to evaluating workstation-class graphics cards. There are simply too many commonly-used professional apps out there that need to be included, and the benchmark's scope has to be limited by scope.
But the plan to update viewperf regularly, and thus keep it adjusted continuously to the newest demands and requirements, is more than welcome. It's also necessary for a suite that’s supposed to provide relevant results.
- Introducing Our Benchmark System
- CATIA V6 R2012
- Results: CATIA V6 R2012
- Creo 2
- Results: Creo 2
- Energy
- Results: Energy
- Maya 2013
- Results: Maya 2013
- Medical
- Results: Medical
- Showcase 2013
- Results: Showcase 2013
- Siemens NX 8.0
- Results: Siemens NX 8.0
- SolidWorks 2013
- Results: SolidWorks 2013
- CPU Scaling
- Image Quality And Desktop Drivers
- SPECviewperf 12: A Much-Needed And Welcome Update


When AMD releases the mighty 16GB FirePro 9100 based on Radeon R9-290X core will be competitive to the Quadro K6000 in performance.
I find that internal benchmarking the only way to really understand the value of workstation cards. W7000 for example - it was awesome in our internal testing. While good, the cards is much better than these benchmark results suggest. Not sure why I would look at another SPEC benchmark when I will still need to test the cards in-house to really know how good they are for our applications and models.
Unfortunately, testing in the real applications (using something like APCapc) requires actual licenses of the software apps. Many of these vendors (CATIA, NX, etc) simply don't make temp licenses available for reviewers/journalists or other non-users.
VP12 should be quite good enough to help make informed evaluations of GPU hardware. If you are concerned about seeing in-application performance measurements for particular apps, you can ususually find the data with a bit of googling, although take results you find posted on the internet by "regular Joe's" with a grain of salt.
Adam Glick
Sapphire Technologies
tsk tsk tsk
About CPU Scaling: "In the second set of our scaling results, only SolidWorks responds to CPU frequency. Core and thread count don't make a difference.¨
This is not entirely true. It goes as far as 10% at 4.5 GHz.
I find that internal benchmarking the only way to really understand the value of workstation cards. W7000 for example - it was awesome in our internal testing. While good, the cards is much better than these benchmark results suggest. Not sure why I would look at another SPEC benchmark when I will still need to test the cards in-house to really know how good they are for our applications and models.
tsk tsk tsk
It is so problematic to read the posts above too? I wrote:
And for your information: AMD (Sapphire included) was not able to send me a R9 295X2 to my lab here in Germany! So I had to wait for Chris' card (yes, we've paid 550 bucks only for FedEx Priority from U.S. to Germany) and I was so lucky to handle two launch articles at the same time. The day has 24 hrs only, sorry for my laziness.
You get the complete W9100 story (the updated SPECviewperf12 is only a part of this) on 17 pages, don't worry, but it must be translated first.
Titan is good for compute, the SPECviewperf12 is more graphics related. No chance for consumer cards.
"Don't bother with anything else because Nvidia K6000 is the fastest."
You see the results of the consumer cards inside? The Titan is a little bit slower than the tested GTX 780 Ti, the Titan Black is in such cases 2-3% faster. But both are slower than a 780 Ti OC and the results of this card are in the most cases absolutelly worthles. I've tested the consumer cards belong the workstion graphics only for demonstration purposes.
But it really makes no sense to run pro-apps with non-certified hardware and drivers!
A better question is this. The 780 TI OC is faster than a titan black? And are these tests with the normal 780 TI driver? If so for working not he road a 780 ti rig will do the job.