This video runs through a comprehensive set of tests that demonstrates the ultra-fast GPU-accelerated (900%) 3D transparency rendering mode in PTC Creo Parametric 2.0 and a 4X increase in shaded 3D frame rates and interactivity using Vertex Buffer Objects (VBO) on AMD FirePro professional graphics cards.
The video shows the percent performance enhancement in FPS for PTC Creo Parametric 2.0 compared to PTC Pro/Engineer Wildfire. Summary results as follows:
This video compares PTC Creo Parametric 2.0 to Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5 for 3D transparency rendering on an AMD FirePro V7900. AMD and PTC developed a new hardware-accelerated transparency feature called Order Independent Transparency (OIT) (See post on ultra-fast GPU-accelerated 3D transparency mode for Creo Parametric 2.0). With the new OIT users can experience up to 900% faster performance in 3D transparency rendering with AMD FirePro professional graphics cards. Check out the video to see the first public example of this. This is impressive.
Tom’s Hardware has a particularly interesting review of AMD’s new entry level ($110) discrete, professional GPU - the AMD FirePro V3900. Tom’s ran a suite of benchmarks and the FirePro V3900 completely dominated Nvidia’s Quadro 400 and beat out the Quadro 600 in most scenario, often by a great margin - particularly in CATIA, Lightwave, Maya, and SolidWorks, and Siemens NX
Notably, the V3900 draws more power in idle and under load than its competitors, but Tom’s still recommend the FirePro V3900.
“The FirePro V3900 is a fitting successor for the V3800. Priced at $110, we consider it to be a good value in the entry-level workstation graphics card space. As long as you’re primarily looking at mostly static CAD images, this card is a good alternative to the low-end Quadro cards, both with respect to price and performance.”
Tom’s also did a quick comparison to comparable chips on consumer cards like the Radeon HD 6570 or Geforce GT 430 and saw massive performance dips due to consumer grade drivers. Conclusion: “For folks whose jobs depend on good performance and validation in money-making applications, paying the extra money (for the professional card and driver) is probably justified.”
These two PDFs discuss the value proposition and benchmarks of using FirePro graphics which have been optimized and certified for SolidWorks 2011 and SolidWorks 2012.
Real-time Previews with RealView
SolidWorks 2012 offers more advanced shading in real-time with RealView and Ambient Occlusion, for depth and realism reducing the need for ray-traced rendering.
Geometry Boost
SolidWorks 2012 offers more advanced shading in real-time with RealView and Ambient Occlusion, for depth and realism reducing the need for ray-traced rendering. The GeometryBoost capabilities of the FirePro line means features like Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing (FSAA) can be turned on in SolidWorks permanently without slowing down the workflow.
Eyefinity multi-display technology
Support for advanced design workflows, where SolidWorks users switch between applications including
SolidWorks Simulation and PhotoView 360 or other applications
Vegas Pro 11 is designed to take advantage of GPU acceleration for video FX, transitions, compositing, pan/crop, track motion and encoding. The series of test discussed below used an AMD FX 8150 8-core processor, 3.6 GHz, 8GB RAM, running Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit. The benchmarks evaluated preview and rendering with OpenCL GPU acceleration enabled on the AMD FirePro v4900, V5900 and V7900 and compared to the comparably priced NVIDIA Quadro 600, 2000 and 4000.
The Vegas Pro project consisted of seven segments in the timeline of varying complexity and length. Measurements were made of Final Render times, as well Preview performance at using “Best/Full” preview settings and the average “free run” frame rate.
Develop3D reviews the new AMD FirePro V3900 and V4900 graphic cards.
“We tested both cards under SolidWorks 2010, using our standard camera benchmark with level of detail switched off and RealView enabled ——putting a bigger load on the system by displaying real world materials, reflections and shadows. ... Both cards did themselves justice.”
“Low-cost professional CAD graphics cards used to be about providing professional hardware for entry-level CAD software like AutoCAD — an alternative to consumer cards. With the FirePro V3900 and V4900 already certified for the likes of Siemens NX, PTC Creo and SolidWorks — and demonstrating good performance — it looks like they may well be giving AMD’s mid-range professional cards a run for their money in the future.”
AMD launched a FirePro Development user community for end-users, developers and AMD experts to share tips and best practices about the FirePro Vx800 and Vx900 graphic cards. The newly updated community page greatly improves users’ ability to ask questions and get answers on any FirePro related topic:
For example, here’s an interesting post just answered:
Question I’m trying to solve a very specific problem. For this, I need to run 4 displays at 120Hz, and have the vsync for each trigger a quarter of a frame after the previous:
Display 0, start frames at 0s, 4/480s, 8/480s, ...
Display 1, start frames at 1/480s, 5/480s, 9/480s, ...
Display 2, start frames at 2/480s, 6/480s, 10/480s, ...
Display 3, start frames at 3/480s, 7/480s, 11/480s, ...
Now the question is, can I do this with one S400 and one or more graphic cards?
Answer 1: Yes, you can connect up to 4 GPUs to a single S400 board.
2: You can genlock multiple displays that are connected to a single GPU as long as the connected monitors are identical.
3: The accepted input range for the house sync is between 15 and 120 H
The newly announced AMD FirePro V3900 workstation graphics card is powered by a new Turks GPU, with 1GB of DDR3 memory, 480 stream processors and support for up to 5 display devices using AMD Eyefinity and DisplayPort 1.2. It is designed to deliver the performance, reliability and compatibility of a high end graphics card at an entry level price point.
Like its higher end counterparts, the V4900, V5900 and V7900, the entry-level FirePro V3900 has been tested and certified with many leading DCC and CAD applications including AutoCAD, Siemens NX, PTC Creo, SolidWorks and 3ds Max. to ensure compatibility, stability, and optimal performance. It of course offers full support for OpenGL 4.2, OpenCL 1.1 and DirectX 11.
Raw compute performance as measured in single-precision GFlops is 20 percent higher than the V3800 it replaces. AMD has run some comparison benchmarks comparing the V3900 to the V3800 and the Nvidia Quadro 400. See below.
With an MSRP of $119 this is an amazing deal for entry level workstation users.
The Standard Performance Evaluation Corp (SPEC) is seeking help to develop a new workstation performance benchmark.
The Graphics and Workstation Performance Group (SPEC/GWPG) is seeking applications, algorithms and workloads that measures the performance of workstations running CAE (Computer Aided Engineering), digital media and entertainment, finance, health sciences and energy. The tests should be scalable (i.e. support multi-core processors), preferably solve large problems, support multiple architectures and be freely available to the public.
Jon Peddie Research benchmarked the new AMD FirePro V7900, V5900 and V4900 using SPEC’s Viewperf 11 to isolate the stress on the graphics boards, and SPECapc (Lightwave and 3ds Max), Cadalyst and Cinebench to get a handle on how well the boards support whole-system performance. Interestingly the inexpensive ($189) V4900 shines in many of the tests.
“In the FirePro V7900 and V5900 boards, we see the first workstation-caliber usage for Cayman, and the results are what we expected. Both offer compelling price/performance, and the V7900 manages a reasonable-but-not-overwhelming advantage over the V5900”
“As the first and only FirePro board to tap the Turks GPU, the V4900 demonstrated some very compelling price performance.”
FireUser.com is a community resource for CAD, visualization, 3D, video and engineering professionals to learn about the latest acceleration and display technologies and news with a focus on the AMD FirePro workstation graphics line.
