SPECviewperf 12: CATIA, Creo and Maya 2013
Introduction to SPECviewperf 12
SPECviewperf 11, introduced back in 2010, has been showing its age for a while. It wasn't really giving us a realistic-looking picture of modern workstation graphics hardware and driver performance anymore. The applications composing it were just too old. Moreover, AMD and Nvidia were thoroughly optimizing for the specific workloads, throwing off the suite's value.
So, the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) chose to step up its game with a much-needed update. After all, SPEC’s mission is to create relevant benchmarks that closely adhere to current industry standards.
AMD and Nvidia are both members of SPEC, allowing them to exert some influence over the new collection of tests. The idea is that no company gets an unfair advantage. We'll see how that works out in practice, though.
CATIA V6 R2012
The FirePro W8100 easily surpasses the W8000 that came before it, along with the W9000 and Nvidia Quadro K5000. Of course, Nvidia's Quadro K6000 is in a class of its own. Still, the W8100 demonstrates an impressive debut, landed just behind the W9100.
Creo2
While the new AMD cards top their predecessors, both Quadro cards outperform them. Clearly, AMD’s driver team still has unresolved action items.
Maya 2013
The opposite is true in Maya 2013, where AMD's close collaboration with Autodesk pays off. The FirePro W8100 falls in line behind the W9100, which beats Nvidia's Quadro K6000.