ATI FirePro beta driver 8.76.2 coming soon with 20%-80+% performance gains across CAD and DCC apps

A new AMD blog talks about the upcoming release beta driver version 8.76.2 for ATI FirePro hardware. Highlights include:

• More than 50% increase in performance for ATI FirePro V8800 on the 3ds Max subset of the SPECviewperf 10 benchmark, as well as a 40% gain on the Catia subset, a 20% gain on the Pro E subset and more than 20% gain on the overall composite.
• Across the board performance increases for the entire family of current ATI FirePro graphics on the Lightwave subset of the new SPECviewperf® 11 benchmark, with the entry-level ATI FirePro V3800 achieving up to 62% performance gain and the ultra-high ATI FirePro V8800 achieving up to 81% gain, compared to the previous driver.
• Across the board performance increases for the entire family of current ATI FirePro graphics on the SolidWorks subset of SPECviewperf 11, with the entry-level ATI FirePro V3800 achieving up to 43% performance gain and the ultra high-end ATI FirePro V8800 achieving a 63% gain compared to the previous driver.

Hot Hardware’s ATI FirePro Round-up: V7800, V4800, V3800

Hot Hardware adds to their earlier review of the FirePro V8800 with a new round of real-world reviews covering the rest of the new FirePro line: the high-end V7800, the mid-range V5800, an entry-level V4800, and super affordable V3800. 

Takeaway quotes:

“Within the workstation and professional graphics world, ATI is currently dominating the scene. They are providing consumers with a full product line of FirePro cards that span the entire performance spectrum, with prices ranging from $109 all the way up to $1499. Much like the desktop market, ATI is months ahead of NVIDIA in getting products launched and available for purchase.”

“On average, the V7800 consistently performed within 11% of the V8800 in both synthetic and real world benchmarks. That point alone is impressive to us, especially when you look at the cost of each card ($799 vs $1499). But it also finished ahead of the V8750 in 8 of the 11 benchmarks we ran, trumping last year’s flagship model and making it a legitimate high end workstation graphics card. Our SANDRA GPGPU testing put the V7800 ahead of the older V8750 by 65% in Compute Shader results and 40% for Stream processing performance. In many ways, the V7800 delivered and workstation professionals should take note of what ATI was able to do with a single slot cooling solution.”

In reference to the 38800 and 4800: “we expected to compare the two entry level cards to one another, but the results pushed us in a different direction. Why? Because the V4800 outperformed expectations during our real world testing. This affordable GPU did not perform like an entry level product. Looking at our SPECviewperf scores, the V4800 came within roughly 6% of the performance displayed by the V7800. On the other hand, our synthetic OpenGL and GPGPU benchmarks told a different story. Cinebench showed the V7800 to be almost twice as fast as the V4800, while SANDRA scored it over three times faster.”

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Getting more for less is never a bad thing, especially in GPUs - Icrontic reviews ATI FirePro V8800

Icronic reviews the ATI FirePro V8800 and compares it to the FirePro V7800, V5800, V4800, and V3800 as well at the Quadro FX3800, using Cinebench R10, Cinebench R11, and SPECViewPerf 10.

General takeaways:

- ATI has upped the ante of real time OpenGL performance in their newest generation of workstation GPUs

- The lightning quick performance and superb feature set are more than enough to offset the pangs of heat production and power use, so long as you have enough space to house the card. The addition of Eyefinity Multi-Display alone makes the V8800 a perfect solution for artists who spend too much time alt+tabbing through work. I can guarantee if you get a chance to work with the FirePro V8800, you will not be disappointed in any way. This card is spectacular.

AEC Magazine review of FirePro V8800 performance and EyeFinity

Greg Corke (of Develop3D fame) has written a review of the FirePro V8800 for AEC Magazine.

The take away:
“The FirePro V8800 certainly delivers the frame rates, but what many architects and engineers may find more exciting about the product is the potential for Eyefinity. Being able to drive a powerwall from a single machine is an exciting proposition, and one that could help bring large scale visualisation and clash detection into the hands of smaller organisations. But, transforming a desktop into an extended 3D accelerated workspace is even more compelling and with display prices tumbling all the time, well within reach of all companies, big and small. As more and more architect and engineers get involved with simulation, rendering and design direct on the desktop the timing could not be better.”

PC Perspective and Phoronix review the new FirePro V5800 and V3800

PC Perspective and Phoronix (under Linux) already have reviews of the newly released FirePro V5800 ($469) and FirePro V3800 ($109):

Snippets from PC Perspective:

“The V5800, coming in at $469, paints the Quadro FX 3800 in a pretty damning light.  After all the NVIDA option will sell for about 1.8x the price (~$800) of the V5800 but more often than not is the slower card.  The V3800 isn’t going to win any performance benchmarks but with the $109 price tag it is easily the lowest cost pro-level offering from either company with a modern feature set. “

“The feature set is something that AMD continues to dominate.  With included goodies like three display support with Eyefinity technology, an OpenGL 4.0-ready driver and of course, DX11 support, the FirePro V8800, V5800 and V3800 are a noticeable generational leap ahead of the Quadro FX 4800/3800 for those developers that are living on the bleeding edge of technology.  As we have seen in our Eyefinity testing for gaming, being able to run with a wide array of displays can drastically change how your view your work environment and increase your productivity. “

Snippets from Phoronix (testing under Linux)

“The FirePro V5800 with the Maya test also performed remarkably. In fact, the V5800 did even better than the previous-generation FirePro V8700/V8750 graphics cards! The FirePro V8800 was about 8% faster than the FirePro V5800, but still the performance exhibited by the Juniper XT workstation card is rather impressive. While the FirePro V5800 and Radeon HD 5770 are based upon the same core, the performance of the workstation-oriented card was 3.13x that of the consumer equivalent with SPECViewPerf’s Maya view-set.”

“While the FirePro V3800 sells for just over $100 USD, it’s a much greater fit than even the ~$150 USD Radeon HD 5770 when it comes to workstation graphics with it usually running more than twice as fast. The FirePro V3800 is also an interesting solution with its minimal power requirements and low heat output.”

Review of ATI FirePro V8800 under Lunux

Phoronix reviews the ATI FirePro V8800 running under Linux (Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit with the Linux 2.6.31 kernel, GNOME 2.28.1 desktop, and X.Org Server 1.6.4.). General conclusion: “If you are looking for the very best in workstation graphics, look no further than the AMD FirePro V8800.”

And from the article:

“We were already quite pleased when AMD introduced the FirePro V8700 last year and then their subsequent introduction of the FirePro V8750 that upped the memory performance a few months later. AMD then rejuvenated these workstation graphics cards last month when rolling out an enhanced driver. A simple Linux driver update caused the performance in some OpenGL benchmarks to improve by as much as 32 to 59% faster than the older software stack. With the introduction of the FirePro V8800, AMD has successfully pushed the limits of workstation graphics even further.”

“In some of the OpenGL workstation benchmarks we carried out under Linux there were a few areas where the performance only improved by ~3% with the V8800 compared to the V8750, but in a majority of the tests there were sizable gains from 14~18% and higher. The most significant gains we found were actually with the Unigine-based Heaven / Tropics benchmarks on Linux where the frame-rate in these demanding OpenGL tests jumped by more than 50%! This is very impressive.”

Life in the professional graphics card market has just shifted into overdrive - V8800 reviewed

3D Professor got his hands on a FirePro V8800 ahead of most others and ran the hardware through it’s paces.  A quote from the review:

“we have successfully demonstrated the scalability of the card over its predecessor the ATI FirePro V8750.  In some areas we see a 40% increase.  Now much of this performance improvement is down to the architecture of the new product, some down to the driver team, the unsung heroes that so many forget about.  The results shown within have been extra-ordinary to say the least. This card most certainly has overtaken its predecessor in many ways, faster memory, the aid of 1600 unified shaders - this will help many in complex drawings.  Life in the professional graphics card market has just shifted up directly to overdrive.”

Two other reviews out today:
HotHardware
PC Perspective

Review of the liquid-cooled Boxx 4850 Extreme with ATI FirePro V8750

Jon Peddie Research has a review of the ultra cool Boxx 4850 Extreme with an ATI FirePro V8750.

“it lived up to its name with a Core i7 CPU clocked at an impressive 4.15 GHz, thanks to a liquid-cooling system from CoolIT, a vendor with lots of experience in the field. The fastest single-socket CPU we’ve seen is complemented with a capable 6 GB of 1333 MHz DDR3 memory, a fast 250 GB SATA drive and topped off with AMD’s top-of-the-line professional graphics card: the FirePro V8750 w/ 2GB memory.

Poll on hardwareinfos.com: How good are your video card drivers from Nvidia and AMD?

There is currently a poll on hardware-infos.com that asks their readers to compare AMD’s Catalyst GPU drivers vs Nvidia’s Forceware drviers. Given the efforts AMD has put into developing their drivers (including for the FirePro line), it should be no surprise that AMD drivers are considered better overall than Nvidia’s drivers by end users.

Testing AMD’s new v8.072 FirePro driver on Linux using a FirePro V8750

While there was a lot of positive press about the 20+% performance boosts with the new v8.072 FirePro driver release, one feature not mentioned was Linux support and performance. So Phoronix decided to run their own SPECViewPerf tests using an ATI FirePro V8750 comparing the previous fglrx 8.66.10 release found in Ubuntu 9.10 with the new fglrx 8.70.3 release.

The results speak for themselves.

• 31.5% faster in 3ds Max
• 33% faster in CATIA
• 33% faster in PRO/Engineer
• 32% faster in SolidWorks
• 59% faster in UGS Teamcenter Visualization Mockup

In addtion to the the major performance improvements, the article also notes the DisplayPort audio and stereo 3D support.