Unlike the pioneering days of desktop graphics work – the late 1990s and early 2000s, when companies like 3Dlabs, Intergraph and ELSA were still building specialised hardware specifically aimed at professional users – today’s professional and consumer cards use essentially the same hardware, with a few key differences. The answer to the second is: “Not a lot – from a hardware standpoint, at least.”
The questions on most artists’ minds when considering what GPU to buy are, “Do I really need a professional card? And what’s the difference between professional and consumer cards anyway?” The answer to the first question depends on the kind of work you will be doing: something I’ll elaborate on later. So what’s the difference between such consumer cards and their workstation equivalents? As well as their professional cards, both manufacturers have ranges aimed at gamers: Radeon in the case of AMD GeForce in the case of Nvidia. Street prices are taken from and were correct as of 4 November 2013.īefore we get into the benchmarks, let’s discuss some of the issues that governed our testing process, including multi-monitor set-ups, the growth of GPU computing – and our choice of cards itself. Below, you can see a comparison chart for each of the cards benchmarked in this review. We are looking at the W5000, W7000 and W8000 today, comparing them with two previous-generation cards, the V5900 and V7900. The W9000 is an ultra-high-end card, and carries 6GB of RAM. The W7000 and W8000 are high-end cards, carrying 4GB of RAM. Like the Quadro K2000, the W5000 carries 2GB of RAM and is considered a mid-range card. (Review samples for the other current-generation cards were not available at time of testing.)ĪMD’s current line-up of professional desktop cards consists of the FirePro W5000, W7000, W8000 and W9000. Today, we will be looking at the K4000 and K5000 and comparing them to four of Nvidia’s previous-generation cards: the non-Kepler-based Quadro 2000, 4000, 50. The K6000 is an ultra-high-end model sporting a whopping 12GB of on-board RAM. The K2000 carries 2GB of RAM and is considered a mid-range product, while the K4000 and K5000 carry 3GB and 4GB of RAM respectively, and form the high end of the range. The K600, with 1GB of graphics RAM, is an entry-level model.
Nvidia’s current generation of professional cards consists of the Quadro K600, K2000, K4000, K5000 and K6000 (the ‘K’ stands for the Kepler architecture on which the cards are based). But technology has moved on, so we’re back to take a look at new cards from the manufacturers’ current line-ups, and see how they compare to their previous-generation counterparts. Our last group test of professional graphics cards took place back 2011 and featured all of the latest models from AMD and Nvidia at the time. Bringing our comprehensive graphics card group test up to date, Jason Lewis puts 11 of Nvidia and AMD’s current contenders through a battery of real-world benchmarks. Choosing the right professional GPU isn’t easy.