AMD FIREGL V5600 Review

[v_rr]

The new AMD FireGL V5600 professional graphics card. Nearly Four weeks ago on launch day we showed what AMD’s new entry level professional graphics card the FireGL V3600 could really achieve. The new FireGL V5600 has most certainly shifted the series of card up a tremendous gear, for an entry level mid range card it has the magical bang for buck.

One important point of note. No additional power connector is needed to supply the graphics card as it can safely run from a system that only has a 350 Watt PSU; which is going to be a huge benefit to those wishing to upgrade their graphic cards and not have to worry about additional costs of a new power supply. The FireGL cooler fitted was quiet and acoustics were not an issue at all whilst underload throughout the tests. Normally this is a point were one would here some serious noise kicking into play from either the system fans or the GPU cooler. Not so as we stated earlier - nice and quiet. With continuing support for both Direct X 10 and OpenGL 2.1 will mean no reduction upon the CPU performance which is evident from the Cinebench Scores returned.

In all the years of reviewing professional cards we have not seen such a performance uptake from entry level to mid range. The drivers we have seen and tested; kudos to the some 150 members of the driver team. And what is the next driver release going to be capable of – one will be completely surprised at what it is going to bring. Astounding performance uptakes.



One of the most interesting points of the new SPECviewperf® 10.0 benchmark is the huge amounts of information it produces. The logs hold bountiful amounts of precise but critical information that show just how the graphics card and complete system I/O performs. It may take considerable amounts of time to complete, though the wait for the true professional is well worth it as we have now seen on the last 2 outings of SPECviewperf® 10.0 in its fullest.

The performance of the FireGL V5600 has been remarkably astonishing to say the least for a 128 bit controller! Returning results which are found in the competitions High-End professional cards, in some areas their Ultra High-End Cards!

http://www.3dprofessor.org/Reviews&#...0&C2SBA+P1.htm

[informal]

Awesome performance!Especially for a card with 128 bit mem. bus.

[alayashu]

aye, an amaising vertex-pushing card! Beating an Quadro whos worth thousands of $$ lol

wondering if there's a way to softmod the 2600's to it?
that'd be an 100$ workstation card monster eh!

[v_rr]

Originally Posted by alayashu

aye, an amaising vertex-pushing card! Beating an Quadro whos worth thousands of $$ lol

wondering if there's a way to softmod the 2600's to it?
that'd be an 100$ workstation card monster eh!

there is:

The best thing is its relatively low price and prospect of upgrading Radeons with modded drivers. The V5600 sells for around $600, but as we wrote earlier, it might even be possible to turn an $500 HD2900XT into a FireGL V8600 with modded drivers, more here.
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...=2861&Itemid=1

[mascaras]

FireGL mod for Radeon HD 2900XT


Workstation graphics on the cheap

A Chinese website has posted a modded version of AMD's drivers that will turn an ATI Radeon HD 2900XT into a FireGL V8600.

This might not be all that useful to most owners of a Radeon 2900XT, but if you're into OpenGL 3D rendering and need a fast card for the previews, then a Radeon HD 2900XT will be a lot cheaper than a FireGL V8600 card.

Considering that the FireGL V8600 will set you back US$1899, while you can pick up a 1GB Radeon HD 2900XT for as little as US$499.99, you can save quite a bit of money this way.

You can download the modded drivers here and it's about a 70MB download >> http://www.newdisk.cn/?wesley8



http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...=2828&Itemid=1

[Cooper]

Any one can confirm this?

[twin_savage]

ya, i would really like to know about that driver thing. i thought that there were hardware tweaks to the workstation cards along with driver tweaks, or at least on the quadros.

The main reason workstation cards are so expensive is that the company that makes them has to provide very quick and accurate customer support to the user or company using the cards

[Shintai]

Quadro cards got some BIOS stuff to help prevent hacks. But in the old days you could do it with a driver too there.

Not really twin...they do some testing with drivers to validate and then add huge amount to the price. Its simply like 3D software something you milk like a cow.

What are you gonna do, use something else?

[Cooper]

Shintai
sometimes I think you are day dreaming. What are you talking about?
Ok tomorrow I'll try to test this drivers on 2900XT 1GB with SPEC

[Shintai]

Originally Posted by Cooper

Shintai
sometimes I think you are day dreaming. What are you talking about?
Ok tomorrow I'll try to test this drivers on 2900XT 1GB with SPEC

Im talking about desktop>workstation hack.

Its nothing more than artificial limitations to milk the consumers. Just like SLI etc.

And as stated with 3D software, there is no alternative. All you can do is bend over and pay.

[deathman20]

Originally Posted by Cooper

Shintai
sometimes I think you are day dreaming. What are you talking about?
Ok tomorrow I'll try to test this drivers on 2900XT 1GB with SPEC

That would be sweet. I only have the 512Meg version so surely someone will fix something for it to be reconized. Its gotta do good. If my work laptop with a X1600 Mobile could whoop my X1900XT I had OCed the 2900XT has got to have a great jump in performance.

[twin_savage]

workstation software (CAD stuff) isn't that hard to get, you can get a student license for cheap. the hardware is my issue, so i was thinking of picking up a 2900xt or 2600xt

[Shintai]

You still gonna need a FireGL/Quadro card for HW acceleration I bet.

[deathman20]

Most FireGL conversions from drivers actually unlock all the card has to offer for programs thanks to the way ATI has made them unlockable

Heck my card unlocked the realtime shading thing in Solidworks (Mobility X1600 card). My boss lost the bet i could make it work lol, boy he was totally scratching his head why I got it to work.

nVidia on the other hand since the TI series is the last I remember that you could modifiy them easily without a bios flash if it would even work at that.

[crash5s]

Originally Posted by Shintai

You still gonna need a FireGL/Quadro card for HW acceleration I bet.

We don't use firegls at work so I can't comment on that. However you can run cad programs, or stuff like 3ds max with a generic geforce card if you want. However you're missing a lot of features and it won't be as fast.

The thing is this is (for the most part) all software based. There are some hardware changes in the cards, but they are just screwing you over with a locked card and drivers.

[Cooper]

With workstation graphic card customer gets better warranty returns policy, better drivers support, better technical support. This is also included in the premium.

[saaya]

nice!
and some more good news for amd, finally!

[Shintai]

Originally Posted by crash5s

We don't use firegls at work so I can't comment on that. However you can run cad programs, or stuff like 3ds max with a generic geforce card if you want. However you're missing a lot of features and it won't be as fast.

The thing is this is (for the most part) all software based. There are some hardware changes in the cards, but they are just screwing you over with a locked card and drivers.

Comapring here between a Q6600 with say a 8800GTX and a Old Geforce 6/7 quadro card is like day and night in 3dsmax and maya. The quadro based one beats the other by a huge length.

[kyosen]

I tried this mod driver with Radeon 2900XT 512MB on P5W-DH + E6600@3.5G.
I've also checked Quadrized 6800Ultra.

SPECveiwperf10.0 results...Left: 6800U-Quadro, Right: 2900XT-FireGL

3dsmax-04: 35.71 / 45.30
catia-02: 46.78 / 42.35
ensight-03: 22.56 / 48.89
maya-02: 86.57 / 209.72
proe-04: 34.28 / 20.78
sw-01: 47.25 / 91.75
tcvis-01: 8.43 / 30.66
ugnx-01: 10.62 / 27.88

6800U-Quadro


2900XT-FireGL


And SPECapc for Pro/E Wildfire2.0:

6800U-Quadro


2900XT-FireGL


I'm using Pro/E(3D-CAD) for daily work, so I feel a little sad with these results,
but I think R600 series have potential...
...I hope that AMD driver team will make further improvements

*watches all maya users raid the shops for ati cards*

looks like its the same situation with performance again as with the dektop drivers...
very inconsistent speed... in some applications it sucks donkey balls and in others it blows away the competition...

[karbonkid]

It's nice to see ATI's openGL performance improving under AMD. Coupled with Linux drivers that might actually work, it might be enough for me to make the jump, as long as the 2900XT--->FireGL mod works. In the past, radeon--->FGL mods have been easier than GeForce--->Quadro mods, especially since Geforce 7000 onwards, when it seems nVidia has taken extra precautions to prevent both softmods and hardmods. I know of successful mods from FireGL Z1-128 to an X1-128 (basically the workstation equivalent of 9500pro to 9700pro) and Radeon 9800pro---> FGL X3-256T simply by flashing the BIOS between cards, but I haven't seen any mods for PCIe Radeon to FireGL, with the exception of pure driver-based softmods, which do no good to me in Linux...

[Cooper]

Tested modded drivers on 2900XT 1GB version

Standart Cats 7.8:


Modded FireGL drivers:


SPECviewperf® 10 and 3DMarks coming tomorrow

BTW are there any other tests for OGL ?

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

Originally Posted by Cooper

..
BTW are there any other tests for OGL ?

While not necessarily optimized for FireGL:

Windows:

http://www.opengl.org/products/platform/C5/

Linux:

http://www.opengl.org/products/platform/C6/

Mac:

http://www.opengl.org/products/platform/C7/

Off the top of my head, GLXGears is a good one that's very standardized across the board.

[Greenhead]

Originally Posted by Cooper

Tested modded drivers on 2900XT 1GB version

Standart Cats 7.8:


Modded FireGL drivers:


SPECviewperf® 10 and 3DMarks coming tomorrow

BTW are there any other tests for OGL ?

nice benchies!!!! i wonder why your cpu score went down slightly. that shouldn't be affected by the video card at all, if anything it should increase

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

Originally Posted by kyosen

I tried this mod driver with Radeon 2900XT 512MB on P5W-DH + E6600@3.5G.
I've also checked Quadrized 6800Ultra.

SPECveiwperf10.0 results...Left: 6800U-Quadro, Right: 2900XT-FireGL

3dsmax-04: 35.71 / 45.30
catia-02: 46.78 / 42.35
ensight-03: 22.56 / 48.89
maya-02: 86.57 / 209.72
proe-04: 34.28 / 20.78
sw-01: 47.25 / 91.75
tcvis-01: 8.43 / 30.66
ugnx-01: 10.62 / 27.88

6800U-Quadro


2900XT-FireGL


And SPECapc for Pro/E Wildfire2.0:

6800U-Quadro


2900XT-FireGL


I'm using Pro/E(3D-CAD) for daily work, so I feel a little sad with these results,
but I think R600 series have potential...
...I hope that AMD driver team will make further improvements

I can't seem to see your pictures. What were the specs of the system running the Quadro? Was the 6800 PCIE or AGP (ie. P5W or other system)? Thanks.