The rest of the Evergreen FirePro lineup

Earlier in the month we saw the release of the FirePro V8800 card as it dominated the top-level professional graphics lineup. Can the new V5800 and V3800, with price of $470 and $110 respectively, do the same for the rest of the professional space? Or will NVIDIA’s aging Quadro line be able to hold off AMD until Fermi can come to the rescue?
Evergreen Summation

Earlier this month AMD launched the FirePro V8800 graphics card, the first professional level GPU using the latest Evergreen architecture.  With it came a new high in professional graphics performance when compared to the likes of NVIDIA’s Quadro FX 4800 and the previous generation of the FirePro, the V8700.  When we were briefed by AMD on these new cards in March we knew about the entire line of Evergreen-based FirePro but couldn’t divulge the information just then.  Today we can and I will be sharing specification details, performance numbers and pricing on just about every stepping of card for the updated FirePro series.

First though, if you haven’t read about the Evergreen architecture and what it offers the professional graphics market, a couple notes:

The most obvious place you will find FirePro products are in the worlds of CAD and digital content creation.  Here the unique features of the V8800 and the Evergreen GPU, specifically the implementation of multi-monitor support with Eyefinity, offer up a wide selection of options for developers and designers.  As a multiple monitor user myself I can tell you that once you go with more than one display it is nearly impossible to go any other way.

AMD FirePro V5800 and V3800 Review - Evergreen completes the sweep - Graphics Cards 43

A single FirePro card with a four display outputs could also be used to power a 4k projector; a task PC Perspective would be more than willing to demonstrate should we find ourselves holding just such a projector.  Seriously though the FirePro line with Eyefinity support has the potential to drastically lower the cost of ultra high resolution displays.

Last week AMD also proudly announced that they were the first graphics vendor to offer an OpenGL 4.0 driver – a fact that at the time was not very compelling to us as gamers.  However, for the professional development world that is often a step ahead (and much more focused on OpenGL) this new driver function could be very important and is another selling point for the latest iteration of FirePro offerings.

Though it is only one card in a family, the AMD FirePro V8800 is the only option being shown off here today.  As I said above, gamers will find the specifications of it pretty familiar: Cypress GPU, 1600 stream processors, an 825 MHz clock speed and 1150 MHz clock rate on the 2GB of GDDR5 memory.  The V8800 will support up to four simultaneous displays with the four included DisplayPort connections and will also include the professional-level stereoscopic synchronization connection.  (For more information on the Evergreen series of GPUs behind the new FirePro cards, check out or first review of the GPU in its desktop form here.)

For more details on the FirePro V8800, check out my review of that card from earlier in April.

AMD nearly completes the FirePro line

As I mentioned above, we have already discussed and tested the V8800, the current top of the line professional graphics card from AMD.  It featured basically the same specs as the consumer Radeon HD 5870 including 1600 stream processors, an 825 MHz clock speed and 1150 MHz GDDR5 memory.  The main difference is the inclusion of a 2GB frame buffer rather than the 1GB seen on the majority of Radeon cards.  But what about the rest of the line?

AMD FirePro V5800 and V3800 Review - Evergreen completes the sweep - Graphics Cards 44

Taking a step down from the V8800 model is the V7800 that has features that closely mimic the Radeon HD 5850 card.  There are 1440 stream processors, providing 2.02 TFlops of compute compared with the V8800’s 2.64 TFlops, and a 2GB GDDR5 frame buffer but all of this is packed into a single slot graphics card that uses under 150 watts of power.  For display support the V7800 has a single dual-link DVI output and two DisplayPort connections.

AMD FirePro V5800 and V3800 Review - Evergreen completes the sweep - Graphics Cards 45

The FirePro V5800 is the next jump down that includes not the Cypress GPU but the Juniper XT model seen in the Radeon HD 5770.  It has 800 stream processors and a 1GB GDDR5 memory system that runs with 64 GB/s of bandwidth and can push as much as 1.10 TFlops of single precision compute power.  The display output configuration is the same: one DL-DVI and a pair of DP connections. 

AMD FirePro V5800 and V3800 Review - Evergreen completes the sweep - Graphics Cards 46

Another step below is the FirePro V4800 that uses the Redwood GPU and 400 stream processors providing only 0.62 TFlops of compute though it continues to have GDDR5 memory.  Again, the displays supported include the single DL-DVI and two DP connections.

AMD FirePro V5800 and V3800 Review - Evergreen completes the sweep - Graphics Cards 47

The final piece to the puzzle is the FirePro V3800 graphics card that also uses a 400 stream processor Redwood GPU but drops the memory support from GDDR5 to DDR3 and 512MB; notice the severe drop in memory bandwidth here.  The card is available with a half-height option so it only supports a pair of display connections.  This card is rated at 0.52 TFLops.

There is another card being announced today from AMD: the FirePro 2460 Multi-View card that offers four display outputs on a half-height card.  For more details on that check out my separate news post on it!

For our testing AMD provided us with both a V5800 and V3800 in addition to the V8800 we tested earlier in the month.  Let’s take a look at the latest FirePro cards!



« PreviousNext »