SPECgpc, makers of industry standard benchmarks such as SPECint, released an updated version of SPECviewperf today. The new SPECviewperf 13, is an update to the industry staple benchmark for measuring the graphics performance in workstation and professional applications.
Ranging from a wide array of applications such as Solidworks, Maya, Creo, 3ds Max, and more, SPECviewperf provides an insight into the performance of mission-critical, but often difficult to benchmark scenarios.
Changes for this new version of SPECviewperf include:
- Support for 4K resolution displays.
- New reporting methods, including JSON output that enables more robust and flexible result parsing.
- A new user interface that will be standardized across all SPEC/GWPG benchmarks.
- New workloads and scoring that reflect the range of activities found in real-world applications.
- Various bug fixes and performance improvements.
Given that the changes include new datasets for the energy, medical, Creo, and Maya viewsets, as well as tweaks to the others, we decided to grab some quick results from two high-end prosumer level GPUs, the NVIDIA Titan Xp and the AMD RX Vega Frontier Edition.
The full testbed configuration is listed below:
| Test System Setup | |
| CPU |
Intel Core i9-7960XE |
| Motherboard | ASUS PRIME X299 Deluxe |
| Memory |
32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3200 Operating at: 2400MHz |
| Storage | Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X 750GB |
| Sound Card | On-board |
| Graphics Card |
NVIDIA GeForce TITAN Xp 12GB AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition (Liquid) 16GB |
| Graphics Drivers |
NVIDIA 397.64 AMD Radeon Pro 18.Q2.1 |
| Power Supply | Corsair RM1000x |
| Operating System | Windows 10 Pro x64 RS4 |
While we see the Titan Xp handily winning most of the tests in SPECviewperf 13, there are some notable exceptions, including the newly updated energy workload where the Vega Frontier Edition manages to pull off a 13% lead. Additionally, Solidworks—a very widely used application for CAD work—sees a 23% performance advantage for AMD.
SPECviewperf is a benchmark that we rely on to evaluate profession application performance, and we are glad to see it's getting some improvements.
For anyone curious about the performance of their system, SPECviewperf 13 is free to download and use for non-profit entities that do not sell computer hardware, software, or related services.
Unfortunately, as I am
Unfortunately, as I am learning SPECviewperf is a very poor benchmark. Case in point, SolidWorks 2004 is not supported on Windows 10, AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition is not a ‘certified’ SolidWorks graphics card and neither is the AMD Radeon Pro 18.Q2.1 drive (http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/videocardtesting.html).
This benchmark you ran is completely useless as CAD is not some FPS race to the top like in the RGB LED 1111 Gamer Gaming reality. After Pro 17.Q3, the ‘certified’ drivers all have noticeable visual issues (i.e. graphical smearing when editing certain features in SolidWorks), using a 1900X, WX 7100 and 32GB ECC RAM, in SolidWorks 2017 and 2018.
I like my WX 7100 just not any of the certified drivers after 17.Q3, so FPS alone is a very poor metric alone.
finally someone telling them
finally someone telling them about outdated benchmarks besides me. some of the windows 10 benchmarks they use to test processors are outdated too!
“The sw-04 viewset was
“The sw-04 viewset was created from traces of Dassault Systemes’ SolidWorks 2013 SP1 application.”
So, not thát old…
https://www.spec.org/gwpg/gpc.static/sw-04.html
I made a mistake referring to
I made a mistake referring to sw-04 as SolidWorks 2004. Either way, your comment shows me that you either don’t use the latest SolidWorks or don’t use SolidWorks at all.
Please see the following link: https://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/SystemRequirements.html.
Also, since I bought the latest AMD based hardware, AMD themselves do not support WX 7100 on anything other then Win 7 and Win 10. So, since I am running the latest SW how do expect SW to provide support on even Windows 7?
Writing that something is not that old, shows me that you have actually no idea about using SolidWorks and the software behavior of not just different Service Packs but versions and on different MS OS versions.
Hi SBS,
We have no documented
Hi SBS,
We have no documented SolidWorks issues at present and would like to understand more and help you with the smearing issue you are describing after the 17.Q3 drivers.
We offer 24/7 support for Radeon Pro WX users. The first link below is for the Radeon Pro Software Help Center. This page includes phone numbers so that you can contact us directly. The second link is to submit an online service request.
We don’t know if you are having a unique experience, and would appreciate the opportunity to help you.
https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/pdh-001
http://support.amd.com/en-us/contact/email-form
Hi Radeon Pro Customer
Hi Radeon Pro Customer Care,
[This is a follow up to your post.]
So I went through the support.amd.com link you provided and filed a support request.
The first response from AMD was: ‘run DDU in safemode and install the latest Pro driver’. The driver is not supported in current version of SolidWorks (2018), but I figured, I give it a shot. After a few restarts, same smearing.
The follow up response from AMD was: ‘to stick with the latest working drivers and wait for the next driver release.’
Why are the Workstation tests
Why are the Workstation tests being done on non Nvidia Quadro and Non Radeon Pro WX SKUs. Nvidia’s Titan XP does it even get the certified professional drivers like the Quadros get and AMD’s Radeon Pro FE gets access to maybe some Professional Drivers but the Radeon Pro FE’s hardware is not fully complient as the Radeon Pro WX SKUs that must be used for production workloads. The Radeon Pro FE and Titan Xp can be used for software development if they have access to the professionl drivers but they can never be used for production workloads where things have to be as error free as possible.
Most certainly any Professional Grapgics/CAD Workstation usage is going to require Xeon/Epyc SKUs and Quardo/Radeon Pro WX GPU SKUs and do you want the airframe in the airplane that you are flying in designed on any hardware that is not vetted/certified for ECC Memory both on the GPU’s hardware/firmware and the CPU’s/MB’s hardware and firmware.
Real workstation CPU/GPU hardware comes branded Xeon/Epyc and Quadro/Radeon Pro WX and those very expensive to vett and certify professional drivers and professional firmware that’s used on the Pro Graphics cards and Pro Motherboards along with the Pro CPUs that are also vetted/certified for ECC memory usage along with all the testing and certification that is done by the makers of the pro software packages.
Where is the real Workstation hardware in this announcement and nobody doing any real engineerng is going to risk using non professional grade hardware for any engineerng work where lives can be lost if errors are made. And that also includes the OS, and its more than likely that that will be the Windows 10 enterprise/workstation version of the OS or some specific Linux Workstation Distro. Windows 10 “Pro” is not really a Pro OS.
Folks the Pro CPU/GPU hadrware costs so much because of that extra Software/Driver/Firmware vetting/certification cost related to Error Free usage than on any non Pro SKUs are not able to guarantee as error free as is possible. That’s Vetting/Certification takes millions of more hours to do for the Real Professional Workstation Hardware, firmware, and drivers! And those millions of hours are millions of dollars more than on any non Pro grade hardware.
Really show me the Xeon/Epyc and Quardo/Radeon Pro WX benchmarks or it’s not real workstation benchmarks!