ATI has just let loose the first professional tier card based on its
Cypress XT core, which in itself is part of the company's highly successful Evergreen series of 40nm chips. Boasting 2GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1.15GHz, 1,600 stream processors and an 825MHz core clock speed, the FirePro V8800 is very much an
HD 5870 adapted to the demands of the digital creation world, and as such it's no surprise that it also requires the same pair of 6-pin auxiliary power connectors. It also supports DirectX 11 and the fresh new
OpenGL 4.0 standard, something those business crazies seem to appreciate, but its killer feature is most probably the price, which -- although steep by common standards -- is $300 less than the $1,800
FirePro V8750 predecessor. Oh, and this card can drive 4 simultaneous displays, but we're
kinda used to that by now with ATI -- the real question is how this pup ranks relative to its forebears and NVIDIA competition. The answer, according to the commonly used Maya, SolidWorks and 3ds Max applications, is that the FirePro V8800 simply destroys the V8750 while also generally outpacing the aging
Quadro FX 4800. Feels pretty nice to have a straightforward conclusion, doesn't it? Check out the links below for the full disclosure.
posted April 7th 2010 5:38AM
16 000 stream processors? Nice...
It should be 600
@Darkeners
1600... I lose 1
@Darkeners
Just wanted to add that 5 Ati shaders = 1 Nvidia shader.
Should be nice, crossfireing this with ATI's greatest gaming card and an eyefinity for a total of 10+ screens and ultimate power.....if even possible.
...Would be nice though
btw, $300 cheaper, still gives us no exact msrp
@Darkeners
QUAD DAMAGE!!! ... i mean hdmi.
@Black Not exactly but I know what are you mean. We can’t say that 5 “steam processors” are like 1 “cuda core”… those are two different architecture, we should measure performance of this solution.
Maybe know AMD/ATI is better than NVIDIA (price-performance), but ATI cards doesn’t work properly whit games that I’m would like to play.
@n0ne
Nope, what you see there is quad DisplayPort.
HDMI is a terrible thing.
@Darkeners
You are right, I should have added that it is an approximation. Anyway, it's good you pointed that out.
@abedinthehouse
They said it's $300 cheaper than the $1800 predecessor, so $1500 is the MSRP.
My copies of Solidworks, Rhino and C4D collectively yearn for this.
@Herbaceous Border Patrol
No. They yearn for the drivers. The cards are a sham, they're the EXACT SAME HARDWARE as the Radeons. You're paying for the drivers and other licensing.
@Kurian If you used these drivers could you get any 5800 card to use it's fourth output at the same time? (right now catalyst 10.3 only lets you use three at once)
Bye Bye Fermi...
can these workstation cards be used for games?
i've not seen any hardcore gamers using one of these in their rigs...
@(Unverified) They can, though the reason you've not seen them in a gamer's rig is that people can run multiple HD 5870s for less than this one card costs.
@Vlad Savov
So what makes a professional card so special? I am assuming the biggest chunk of the cost for this card isn't the hardware but rather the software.
@Aurailious
You're mainly paying a 400% price increase for the drivers.
Earlier version, you could softmod to turn a gaming card into a workstation GPU but AMD countered it with newer drivers which made it harder. The newer FireGLs and Quadros cannot be soft modded so you have to buy it if you want a 3000% speed increase in Maya or something like that.
The other thing is that if you own a design or VFX studio, if you run a workstation GPU then you automatically become certified as a professional company and not just someone who is giving it a go... as silly as it sounds, it's a sure fire way in filtering out people who aren't dead serious about the business. In Australia, the same thing happens, many production companies aren't taken seriously until you go by their rules.
Btw, don't let people tell you that you get better customer service when you buy a workstation GPU, because you simply don't... they couldn't give a shit if you paid the higher price, and they still treat you like an dipshit with instructions similar to "is your pc on" whenever you run into an issue.
Crysis.
@Broderbund *sigh*
@Broderbund
Anyone who buys this card JUST to game on it deserves to be scammed by Nigerian princes.
It was a joke!
YES!!!
My aging FireGL V8650 is coughing up blood so i was dieing to buy a workstation GPU that could run more than 2 monitors, so i have the V8750 a miss and will go straight for this instead!
However, i think i might wait a bit until the V8850 or the new line of Quadros come out... BUT FirePro has always been better at Maya and that's what i need it for, so maybe Quadro is out.
Also i want to add that in these cases, it doesn't matter if the FirePro loses to the Quadro because many people who want to mainly use Maya, only get the FirePro, whereas people who want to use 3DSmax get the Quadro... the differences are small but there is somethings Quadro does better and vice versa.
It doesn't matter if you even grabbed a Quadro FX4600, it'll probably beat the V8800 in some of the tests that were optimized for the Quadro.
For me, i use Maya most of the time, so the FirePro gives the best performance and having the ability to connect two other monitors to my setup already (2 x Dell U2711) then it's a dream come true..
I'll stick with my Eyefinity6 5870.
I seem to like ATI more and more these days... nVidia just doesn't have much to offer me, lately.
@loocas, nVidia is going to be inside your next mobile phone.
IMO nVidia has diversified itself now so it is less vulnerable to the risk of loosing the lead in the desktop market.
And looking here - http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ - I do not think it is going to happen any time soon.
Though looking into the survey, one might reach conclusion that nVidia indeed can loose the lead in the desktop market as it dominates right now with old gf8x00 cards. And if those people were considering upgrade right now nVidia has little to offer.
No hdmi no buy. Display port is by far the worst port Ive ever used, it doesnt play nice at all with DVI and HDMI devices. Its just a horrible technology, its features are all centered around professional use instead of consumer needs, why the hell are video cards supporting this crap?
@aughscreennames
This is a card for people who work with autodesk and solidworks along with other CAD programs and will be making money in their business. This card is not aimed at teenagers to play their computer games in 1080.
How many TFLOPS can this one card do?
Man, i JUST UPGRADED. :< Thats life in the PC world lol. Still though. ATi is kicking ass again. Im staying with ATi for a while.