Workstation Shootout: Nvidia Quadro 5000 Vs. ATI FirePro V8800

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LOL!

Yeah that's why without the specialized workstation drivers (the area nV has always had an edge) their GTX480 gets handily beaten by the lowly HD5870;
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/NVIDIA-Unleashes-Quadro-6000-and-5000-Series-Workstation-GPUs-Review/?page=6

For some reason Uwe et al, didn't think to include desktop models to show this dramatic difference due to drivers, simply to make it a one sentence statement later. Something important to the majority of the people who have to pay for their own rigs and not have a purchasing department make the decision as to what's approved. [:jaydeejohn:5]

As for Fermi being designed for computing in mind, it's a specialized tool, and in the Sandra GPGPU tests (for some reason skipped by Uwe) none of the Fermi designs excel;
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/NVIDIA-Unleashes-Quadro-6000-and-5000-Series-Workstation-GPUs-Review/?page=4

Thanks in part to all of those Fermi parts being artificially crippled for marketing purposes, so the design argument doesn't really apply here despite what some n00bz may think. :whistle:

Fermi works best in specific scenarios, and there it does excel greatly, but the majority of non-institutional systems will likely never get access to, let alone make use of those benefits. :pfff:
 


You should actually contact Adobe about that, because they didn't push the strength of CUDA, Adobe chose to use CUDA only in 1 out of 3 features in the Mercury Playback Engine due to the lack of a finalized OpenCL platform during development; next generation CUDA is gone OpenCL is in. It has nothing to do with shying away from the workstation market or anything other than the ease for Adobe to take their early work and port it with CUDA not develop for CUDA.

Maybe Tom's Hardware can do a test of workstation vs. gaming cards in each category to put this debate to rest, either way. I'd be thrilled to not have to drop 2 grand on a workstation class card. Send a bunch of cards to me. I'll test 'em good!

Yeah we've been asking for that for a while, but little in the way of improvement in the tests at THG. HotHardware did and usually does test multiple desktop/gaming cards with their workstation reviews, but primarily for speed rather than stavility; Xbit usually runs a single gaming/desktop card alongside their tests but once again not comparing quality, just speed. DigitLife/ixbt and 3Dproffesor used to test quality (AA, line quality, overall viewport stability) along with performance testing, but haven't seen them do desktop cards recently, although ixbt did a great review of the Quadro 4000/5000/6000 in March during the nV launches.

Ixbt is also the only one that really still publishes a list of render bugs for both companies (which they have done since the old FX issues), which has always shown they both have issues;
http://www.ixbt.com/video3/i3d-quality-1006.shtml
 

xrodney

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[citation][nom]geok1ng[/nom]"AMD's best approach would be to commit more resources to its driver team to rectify the situation."A true statement if i ever heard one, since AMD merged ATI and fired lots of ATI personnel.[/citation]
This is questionable, since amd took over ati there was drastic improvement in driver quality and feature support. For games Ati have I would say already better drivers then nvidia as at least from my personal experience. I have 3-4 times less issues with ATI then I had with Nvidia and existing issues are usually solvable with little digging on net.
Another story is Linux and Workstation support where nvidia still have lead.
For relatively small GPGPU and professional graphic segment nvidia is committing a lot of resources. As for linux, ati is getting better, but still have long way to go.
 

NotYetRated

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These cards are insanely expensive. I run a newer ATI card, non-workstation level and I play just fine in Solidworks 10 and Autocad 10. Obviously graphics professionals may be able to justify the 9x premium of these cards, but for daily contract work I simply cannot.
 

slimbones

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[citation][nom]TheGreatGrapeApe[/nom]You should actually contact Adobe about that, because they didn't push the strength of CUDA, Adobe chose to use CUDA only in 1 out of 3 features in the Mercury Playback Engine due to the lack of a finalized OpenCL platform during development; next generation CUDA is gone OpenCL is in. It has nothing to do with shying away from the workstation market or anything other than the ease for Adobe to take their early work and port it with CUDA not develop for CUDA.[/citation]

Thanks, this is good to know. Is this common knowledge or do you work for ATI/AMD, nVidia, or Adobe (when you are not building igloo's)?

I was just going by the marketing hype of CS5 and the new Quadros. I read somewhere about ATI/AMD developing the next-gen cards with OpenCL in mind. I'll start researching the OpenCL. I am an artist first and a tech-head second.

I couldn't find the Ixbt list of render bugs. Not in English anyway. Looks like a cool site, though.

Tom's will always be my first love in hardware reviews, but Xbit is running a very close second.
 

howiejcee

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Anyone who's used both Nvidia and ATI(/AMD) cards since the 3dfx (I've also used those too and man this reminds me of the good ol Quake1 fragging) days or even the Rage3D days even though that wasn't really used for 3D games, knows that ATI drivers have always "sucked."
 

kelemvor4

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Why did you compare ati's best workstation card to nvidia's middle of the road card? This should have been firepro 8800 vs quadro 6000...
 

slimbones

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The Quadro 6000 has not been released yet. Plus, it's not even the top of the line. The Quadro Plex 7000 is a $14,000 monster.

Enjoy that drink!
 

kingnoobe

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They have.. Done that. Guess what workstation beats a gaming card at things that are related to it, and a gaming card beats a workstation card.. Even with 3rd party drivers. They are not equal. So there would be no reason to ever ever buy a workstation card for gaming.

Although you might get away with buying a gaming card, and 3rd party drivers for work depending on how much you actually do and what you need.
 
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