I have the opportunity to test the Firepro W8100 from AMD. and this review will include not only the computational performance of the Firepro W8100, but also a variety of gaming benchmarks.

The Firepro W8100: Specs and Overview

The Firepro W8100 nearly mirrors the specs of the Radeon R9 290, except for two important features: Enhanced Double Precision processing (full Double precision enabled, vs the 1/8 of the R9 290) and double the ram- 8 GB GDDR5 of GDDR5. The W8100 GPU has 2560 Stream Processors, 8 Gbs of GDDR5 RAM on a 512 bit bus.

Here is the specs page from AMD’s website:

Test setup and Benching Rig:

The testing system used for the benchmarking of the Firepro W8100 is as follows:
CPU: i7 3930k @ Stock speeds
Ram: 32 Gigabytes of DDR3 1600 MHz, Cl9 Ram
GPU: Firepro W8100
SSD: OCZ Revodrive 3 PCIE SSD, 240 GB
Motherboard: Asus P9X79

Benchmarks used:
3dmark03
3dmark06
3dmark Vantage
3dmark Ice Storm
3d Mark Firestrike
GPUPI 1B

Results of Gaming benchmarks:

First up is 3dmark03. The best benchmark of its time, it still provides a good comparison for modern hardware. The Firepro scores well in this benchmark, with a score of 138962 marks. This is roughly the same as a slightly overclocked R9 290- a good showing from this GPU.

Next is 3dmark 06. As with 3dmark 03, this test still provides a good test for modern cards. The Firepro w8100 gets a good score of 31936, which again is about as fast as a slightly overclocked R9 290.

3Dmark Vantage is quite impressive with the Firepro w8100, with it achieving a score of 37790, which is better than 94% of all other results. For a workstation class GPU, this is very good!

In 3dmark Ice Storm, the Firepro w8100 gets an impressive score of 161308 marks. This is better than 93% of all other results. AMD is doing a fine job on 3d performance on the workstation cards that they have, as you can see.

In 3dmark Firestrike, the Firepro performs well enough, while not being that good- getting a score of 8251. Considering the 8 Gbs of Vram, and the fact that the GPU is essentially an r9 290, the score of 8251 is not all that great. That being said, it is still better than 66% of all other PC’s, which is very good, and considering the Quadro k4000 gets around 6800 in 3dmark Firestrike the Firepro w8100 is a better performer.

On to the last benchmark, GPUPI. GPUPI uses an FP64 calculation to calculate to a set amount of digits of Pi. In this case, I am using the 1 billion digits of Pi calculation. In this benchmark, one that is measuring the sheer power of a GPU, the Firepro does exceptionally well. The time it took for the GPU to calculate 1B digits of Pi was 25 seconds and 361 ms. This is in the top 200 results for the GPUPI benchmark in the world, which is an incredible showing. It beats out a variety of Liquid Nitrogen cooled GPUs- while at near stock speeds! This is one of the areas where the AMD Firepro w8100 truly shines in- pure computational workloads.

Conclusion

While meant to be a workstation GPU, the Firepro w8100 can also do a pretty good job at gaming. As opposed to Nvidia’s workstation class GPU’s, AMD does a decent job at making the 3d performance at least as good as the mainstream counterpart- in this case the r9 290. While I certainly would not buy this videocard for the sole purpose of gaming (the r9 390x is much better in that case), this GPU does do well enough in gaming. Given the $1000 price point, this is a very good choice for professionals who would like to have a system that can perform well in pro uses, but also performs well in 3D applications. And compared to Nvidia’s Quadro offerings, this GPU is actually a bargain. Again, you can buy much better gaming setups for the price of a Firepro w8100, but this is a very good choice for professionals looking to get some bang for your buck, in terms of 3D and computational performance.