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Perspective: Radeon HD 5870 vs FirePro V8750
Bobby Miller
November 5, 2009 12:35 PM ET in Tech
Our review of the ATI FirePro V8750 workstation GPU showed that the card is blazing fast at DCC. We tested the V8750 against the venerable NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX, and the difference in performance was staggering. But the 8800 GTX is almost four years old, and the question kept pouring in: How would the V8750 fare against the fastest single GPU on earth?
It just so happens that Icrontic recently fitted its test bench with such a GPU, the ATI Radeon HD 5870. And with that, it’s time to finally put the question to rest: How does the best workstation card AMD offers compare to the Radeon HD 5870, a desktop card that’s 100% faster on paper? The results may shock you.
The ATI Radeon HD 5870 is the flagship DirectX 11 GPU. Released on September 23, it is the fastest of the four available GPUs compatible with DirectX 11. As with any new flagship GPU release, gamers and enthusiasts have flocked to NewEgg and other retailers to buy it. It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it answers “yes” to the legendary “Can it play Crysis?” question. But will it blend?
Before jumping into the benchmarks, let’s take a look at the specs for the Radeon HD 5870 and the FirePro V8750:
Testing methodology for the Radeon HD 5870 is identical to what we used with our original FirePro V8750 review. We benchmarked the Radeon HD 5870 in Cinebench R10, SPECviewperf 3ds Max, and SPECviewperf Maya.
The only test we excluded was the general performance in Autodesk Softimage. This is to be a battle of numbers, and the Softimage testing would not communicate the competition well enough.
Enough banter, let’s see the results!
We opened with Cinebench R10, and the results were rather surprising. The HD 5870 performed admirably, coming within a stone’s throw of the V8750 in the render tests. We began to question the V8750’s prowess when pitted against a monster of a desktop GPU, but all of those concerns were blown away when we saw how the HD 5870 fared in SPECviewperf’s Maya and 3ds Max tests.
The FirePro V8750 handily overpowered the Radeon HD 5870 by more than twice the average framerate. The Radeon HD 5870 followed with a strong showing of its own, as it doubled the average framerate put up by the GeForce 8800 GTX.
Results in Maya were nothing short of shocking. While the HD 5870 was in a virtual dead heat with the 8800 GTX, the FirePro V8750 quite simply facepounded both of them. In fact, the V8750’s average performance increase over the big, bad Radeon came out to about 650%. Six hundred fifty percent. Madness.
This is the real performance difference between desktop and workstation GPUs. All of the additional technical talk associated with the FirePro line is not minutiae, it yields serious performance.
These tests should put any doubts about the value of a workstation card to rest. The world’s fastest desktop GPU was absolutely crushed by a workstation board with half the theoretical horsepower. For any artist who was considering buying a high-end desktop GPU to cut corners, we think these numbers call for a new plan.
If you’re serious about 3D art and digital content creation, it’s all about making the most of your precious time. As we’ve seen here today, nothing will give you more time to work than the blazing fast technology found in the FirePro.
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