AMD has revealed two new graphics cards aimed at the professional market: the FirePro V7800P and V9800P. While these names sound familiar, it’s the ‘P’ tacked on the end that makes a big difference: both of these models are passively cooled while maintaining the exact same hardware and speeds of their actively cooled counterparts.
The V7800P is a single slot card with a maximum power draw of 138W. It requires 10 CFM of airflow, supplied by the chassis cooling system. When used with standard office-type applications (meaning non-GPU intensive applications), up to 16 simultaneous virtual machines are supported per GPU.
The V9800P is a dual slot card that draws up to 225W of power. Its cooling requirements are slightly higher at 20CFM, again supplied by the chassis cooling system. Using the same standard office applications, the number of virtual machines supported increases to 22 per GPU.
Both FirePro cards are designed to handle GPU compute and pro graphics tasks which positions them in direct competition with both of NVIDIA’s high-end offerings, Quadro and Tesla—which perform professional graphics and compute roles, respectively. They are also among the first to support RemoteFX(1) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)(2), allowing computing tasks such as digital content creation (DCC) and computer aided design (CAD) to utilize GPU acceleration while in a virtualized environment. This allows the use of less expensive thin client systems on the desktop instead of the more traditional workstation which often costs many times more and uses much more power.
AMD claims two major advantages over NVIDIA’s offerings: First, the FirePro line is capable of handling the tasks of both Quadro and Tesla in a single card, simplifying hardware requirements. Second, and quite possibly most important, is price; the V7800P retails for $1,249 and the V9800P retails for $2,499. The least expensive current Tesla retails for $2,699, making even the top-end FirePro a better value for the performance. In fact, according to AMD, the only NVIDIA card that could beat the V9800 is its Tesla M2090 which retails for $4,049.
AMD already has a design win with Dell. The Dell PowerEdge M610x Blade server will utilize the new passively cooled FirePro cards. This system is advertised as the first server that doubles as both a full compute and VDI solution.
Both cards are now available for purchase—the MSRP for the V7800P is $1,249, and the V9800P is $2,499. The Dell server is available for purchase now as well.
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(1) RemoteFX is graphics virtualization added to Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Using RemoteFX allows users to work remotely in a fully virtualized Windows environment while fully utilizing the capabilities of a GPU. It promises local-like performance when connected to a LAN. The desktop system is actually hosted in a datacenter as part of a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) or session virtualization environment (formerly known as Terminal Services. Uses standard RDP connections from a broad range of client devices from thin clients to full desktop systems.
(2) VDI virtualizes the desktop and places it on a remote server, allowing a client system to access its desktop environment from anywhere. This has the benefit of using very low cost thin-client machines on a desktop instead of more expensive workstations, while maintaining a centralized server (or cluster of servers) to handle the actual processing load.
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