Yes. Nvidia has captured almost 95% of market share in Workstation cards. RAW Performance wise 9100 looks promising. But ATI drivers are not properly tweaked for workstation business!
My experiences with FirePro's in the professional market have been tied to specific hardware/driver combinations through a 3rd party OEM. This means using older GPU hardware and nearly as old drivers to run in a 'certified' manner. While not hardware or software lock-in, it is support lock-in. That means a whole slew of new hardware features and bug fixes are out there but they'd be unsupported in the environment.
I didn't mean people don't use FirePro at all. I have used both ATI FirePro and NVIDIA Quadro boards personally. OpenGL driver performance of Quadro is better than FirePro. In addition to that, extra perks like OptiX (for DCC) and most of the CUDA based tools are a much plus. I am using Quadro for DCC related work and they are much better in terms of performance and user experience!
P.S.: All Oscar nominated Animated movies are made on Quadros!
Yes it is, according to my anecdotal observations :). There are "critical mass" and availability issues for these products. The performance and reliability differences between FirePro and Quadro seem to show up the same way as for the gaming cards, title by title basis.
I am guessing those guys with Precisions & FirePro are not running specialized software. I have a Quadro K4000M, it is quite flaky when working with new professional 3D package. I had to switch drivers back and forth to get the new package & solidworks to work.
The whole time NVIDIA OPTIMUS kept on insisting on going to intel's HD for 2D display (idle desktop), which in turn puked when I un-docked the laptop. Apparently multiple screen does not work well with optimus.
The whole thing is quite bad actually, and I shudder to think about anyone who opted for the FirePro equipped Precision.
It's somewhat true, it's very application dependant. Those Firepro owners may never run into issues because they only use apps the drivers are optimized for. There are also a few apps that are *better* optimized for Firepro than Nvidia. It depends entirely on your workload if firepros will be good for you.
That's not entirely true as it varies greatly upon the software you are using. First review I could find, looks like it's leading the pack by a huge margin in some areas, losing in others. Sadly, it's using the same crappy 290X cooler: loud and hot. If I paid $3,999 for this, I'd be upset.
Because FireStream series is screwed, no one is going to buy this useless and overpriced die. Because no one is going to believe words about its "compute performance". People need proof. And no one is getting proof because with this high price there will never be enough programmers to make support for this hardware. Another one fail for AMD.
This card is definitely not useless, and it is called FirePro, not fire stream anymore, AMD is trying to make it clear that that they are not ATI and are getting their workstation act together, rebranding may not be helping, but it is true.
It is definitely limitted use, just like the Quadro K6000, but as far as there never being any proof, that is falacious, if it were true, there would never have been any proof for the K6000, which costs $1000 more. Even with proof though, most engineers and content creators will be staying on their W7000/K4000s and most researchers and simulators will stay on their Teslas and W8000s. Most professionals don't need this, but there are those that do (or want it), so they will sell some.
The true use case for this card are senior engineers at automotive and aerospace companies and the like, who need to be able to load an entire vehicle model and still have the software run smoothly. Digital content creators may not have much use for it since many of the DCC applications make use of CUDA, so they will be stuck on Quadros, but engineering software usually doesn't have such a limitation.
Professional GCN 1.1 won't sell a lot until the W7100 comes out though (presumably at $700-800), that much is true.
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nathanddrews - Monday, April 7, 2014 - link
AT doesn't really do much in the way of workstation cards, right? Do you think you'll still get one to test in any way?daku123 - Monday, April 7, 2014 - link
Yes. Nvidia has captured almost 95% of market share in Workstation cards. RAW Performance wise 9100 looks promising. But ATI drivers are not properly tweaked for workstation business!piroroadkill - Monday, April 7, 2014 - link
Isn't this just a random and pointless myth that always persists?I know people with Dell Precision workstations and FirePro cards that never report graphics related issues.
Kevin G - Monday, April 7, 2014 - link
My experiences with FirePro's in the professional market have been tied to specific hardware/driver combinations through a 3rd party OEM. This means using older GPU hardware and nearly as old drivers to run in a 'certified' manner. While not hardware or software lock-in, it is support lock-in. That means a whole slew of new hardware features and bug fixes are out there but they'd be unsupported in the environment.extide - Monday, April 7, 2014 - link
Old Drivers is par for the course in this market, even on the nVidia side.daku123 - Monday, April 7, 2014 - link
I didn't mean people don't use FirePro at all. I have used both ATI FirePro and NVIDIA Quadro boards personally. OpenGL driver performance of Quadro is better than FirePro. In addition to that, extra perks like OptiX (for DCC) and most of the CUDA based tools are a much plus. I am using Quadro for DCC related work and they are much better in terms of performance and user experience!P.S.: All Oscar nominated Animated movies are made on Quadros!
teldar - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
So... You're saying that only movies made on Quadros go on to get nominations? I wonder how much nVidia pays for that.TeXWiller - Monday, April 7, 2014 - link
Yes it is, according to my anecdotal observations :). There are "critical mass" and availability issues for these products. The performance and reliability differences between FirePro and Quadro seem to show up the same way as for the gaming cards, title by title basis.PEJUman - Monday, April 7, 2014 - link
I am guessing those guys with Precisions & FirePro are not running specialized software. I have a Quadro K4000M, it is quite flaky when working with new professional 3D package. I had to switch drivers back and forth to get the new package & solidworks to work.The whole time NVIDIA OPTIMUS kept on insisting on going to intel's HD for 2D display (idle desktop), which in turn puked when I un-docked the laptop. Apparently multiple screen does not work well with optimus.
The whole thing is quite bad actually, and I shudder to think about anyone who opted for the FirePro equipped Precision.
tipoo - Monday, April 21, 2014 - link
It's somewhat true, it's very application dependant. Those Firepro owners may never run into issues because they only use apps the drivers are optimized for. There are also a few apps that are *better* optimized for Firepro than Nvidia. It depends entirely on your workload if firepros will be good for you.nathanddrews - Monday, April 7, 2014 - link
That's not entirely true as it varies greatly upon the software you are using. First review I could find, looks like it's leading the pack by a huge margin in some areas, losing in others. Sadly, it's using the same crappy 290X cooler: loud and hot. If I paid $3,999 for this, I'd be upset.http://www.tomshardware.de/amd-firepro-w9100-revie...
Ryan Smith - Monday, April 7, 2014 - link
We'll be reviewing the W9100 later this month.nathanddrews - Monday, April 7, 2014 - link
*drool*I'd imagine that you'll have to (if you play games on it) crank up the AA to about 8X on 4K-surround ust to use up all 16GB.
hpvd - Monday, June 16, 2014 - link
is there any news regarding this review?ltcommanderdata - Monday, April 7, 2014 - link
So will OpenCL 2.0 be supported on both GCN 1.0 and 1.1 GPUs or only GCN 1.1?TiGr1982 - Monday, April 7, 2014 - link
This W9100 card is so much different from W9000:1) Different GPU (Hawaii vs Tahiti)
2) Doubled DP precision rate (1/2 versus 1/4)
3) Doubled memory chips capacity besides wider memory bus (so 16 GB vs 6 GB)
Why did they NAMED it just W9100? Why not W10000, W12000 or W16000? Or at lest W9500?
It seems to make no sense to me IMHO.
nunomoreira10 - Monday, April 7, 2014 - link
they dont want people with w9000 fell bad :Psohail adnan - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
for $3999 will pick up 7 AMD Radeon R9 290X for MSRP $549 each, hence you know i'm not gonna play just games with it.. lolsanaris - Saturday, April 12, 2014 - link
Because FireStream series is screwed, no one is going to buy this useless and overpriced die.Because no one is going to believe words about its "compute performance".
People need proof.
And no one is getting proof because with this high price there will never be enough programmers to make support for this hardware. Another one fail for AMD.
mfoley93 - Friday, April 25, 2014 - link
This card is definitely not useless, and it is called FirePro, not fire stream anymore, AMD is trying to make it clear that that they are not ATI and are getting their workstation act together, rebranding may not be helping, but it is true.It is definitely limitted use, just like the Quadro K6000, but as far as there never being any proof, that is falacious, if it were true, there would never have been any proof for the K6000, which costs $1000 more. Even with proof though, most engineers and content creators will be staying on their W7000/K4000s and most researchers and simulators will stay on their Teslas and W8000s. Most professionals don't need this, but there are those that do (or want it), so they will sell some.
The true use case for this card are senior engineers at automotive and aerospace companies and the like, who need to be able to load an entire vehicle model and still have the software run smoothly. Digital content creators may not have much use for it since many of the DCC applications make use of CUDA, so they will be stuck on Quadros, but engineering software usually doesn't have such a limitation.
Professional GCN 1.1 won't sell a lot until the W7100 comes out though (presumably at $700-800), that much is true.