AMD FirePro V5800 and V3800 Review - Evergreen completes the sweep
The rest of the Evergreen FirePro lineup
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:
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.
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?
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!
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I like reading about the AMD FirePro V5800 and V3800 reviews. I think those who want to get these graphic cards may need to read the reviews first before deciding whether to buy them. There are so many reviews of web sites and IT products. I think there are also reviews on Groupon and its clones.
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