ATI FireGL V8600 1GB Workstation Graphics

Test System Details Specifications and Revisions

• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (3.0 GHz) Quad Core (1333 MHz FSB)
• 4 x Kingston DDR2-800 CAS 4-4-4-15 Modules (4 GB Total)
• 1 x eVGA nForce 680i SLI LT Motherboard
• 1 x Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk
• 1 x Plextor DVD+/-RW Serial ATA Optical Drive
• 1 x Corsair HX620W 620W Modular Power Supply
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional (32-bit)

• ATI FireGL V3600 256 MB (Driver version 8.44)
• ATI FireGL V5600 512 MB (Driver version 8.44)
• ATI FireGL V7600 512 MB (Driver version 8.44)
• ATI FireGL V8600 1 GB (Driver version 8.44)
• ATI FireGL V8650 2 GB (Driver version 8.44)
• NVIDIA QuadroFX 1700 512 MB (Driver version 169.61)
• NVIDIA QuadroFX 3700 512 MB (Driver version 169.39)
• NVIDIA QuadroFX 5600 1.5 GB (Driver version 169.61)

Just as with our other workstation-class GPU articles – we’ve tested these cards with Windows XP (32-bit). Both NVIDIA and ATI claim XP to still be the dominant workstation-class operating system, and performance is fine tuned for this operating system in order to reflect that.

Synthetic OpenGL Performance Higher Numbers Are Better

As the FireGL V8600 and V8650 share the same clock speeds, it’s not surprising to set them score nearly identically in Cinebench, as this application does not consume more than 1 GB of frame buffer memory. The FireGL V8600 is able to outperform the QuadroFX 5600 card, but gets bested by NVIDIA’s new QuadroFX 3700 in this particular test.