» 1.43 GFLOPS of single precision floating point performance » 4GB GDDR5 memory with 96GB/sec memory bandwidth We certainly hope they do, as it should bring an exciting new edge to SFF workstations, making them capable of satisfying the 3D requirements of the most demanding Inventor, PTC Creo and SolidWorks users.Ĭonsidering new generation ‘Skylake’ SFF workstations like the HP Z240 SFF and Dell Precision 3420, can also host up to 64GB memory, fast M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drives (SSDs) together with high capacity SATA hard disk drives (HDDs) suddenly the entry-level SFF workstation doesn’t look that entry-level anymore. The AMD FirePro W4300 is a hugely impressive graphics card that delivers true mid-range performance in a low profile form factor.Īs the card is so new, the major workstation OEMs have yet to announce whether or not they will be supporting it. Under PTC Creo, however, the Nvidia Quadro K2200 had the lead, clocking in around 20% faster.Īs mentioned earlier, the AMD FirePro W4300 was only a fraction behind the AMD FirePro W5100 in both SolidWorks and Creo (between 2% and 5%). The FirePro W4300 features four mini DisplayPort outputs But with FSAA enabled it was more than twice as fast (we imagine this is the same Quadro K2200 performance issue we first wrote about in August. Under SolidWorks with FSAA disabled the FirePro W4300 was 10% faster on average than the Nvidia Quadro K2200. The PTC Creo 3.0 SPECapc benchmark runs in shaded and edges, reflections and wireframe modes.
DELL AMD FIREPRO W4100 VS NVIDIA QUADRO K620 FULL
The test can be run with Full Scene Anti Aliasing (FSAA) (a rendering mode that smoothes jagged edges) enabled and disabled. The SolidWorks 2015 SPECapc benchmark captures a broad range of display states from shaded and edges and shadows to Realview and Ambient Occlusion. Our test workstation, an HP Z240 Mini Tower, was chosen so we could compare performance with the full height FirePro W5100 and Nvidia Quadro K2200 GPUs. We tested the AMD FirePro W4300 running our standard SolidWorks 2015 and PTC Creo 3.0 SPECapc benchmarks on a single 1,920 x 1,080 display. Doing so with 4K and 5K displays though would likely put a significant strain on the GPU, perhaps best left to higher end cards. With AMD Eyefinity, the card has the ability to span a CAD model across multiple tiled displays.
HDMi, DVI, even VGA displays can also be used with appropriate adapters. The AMD FirePro W4300 supports up to four DisplayPort displays natively and up to six daisy-chained with DisplayPort multi-stream transport (MST). With an MSRP of $379 the AMD FirePro W4300 costs just $20 less than the AMD FirePro W5100. Not surprisingly, this is reflected in the price. And, as our tests confirm, performance is also remarkably similar. On paper the AMD FirePro W4300 and AMD FirePro W5100 appear very alike.īoth feature 4GB GDDR5 memory with 96GB/sec memory bandwidth, 1.43 GFLOPS of single precision floating point performance and four DisplayPort outputs (the FirePro W4300 has mini DisplayPort). AMD FirePro W4300 – Mid-range, small package However, there still remained a sizeable performance gap between it and mid-range Quadro K2200 (4GB), a popular choice for mainstream 3D CAD tower workstations.ĪMD has now upped the ante with the launch of the AMD FirePro W4300, a 4GB low profile GPU that delivers virtually the same graphics horsepower as AMD’s mid-range offering, the FirePro W5100. It was a big step up from the entry-level Quadro K620, as we noted in our review of the Lenovo ThinkStation P300 SFF workstation earlier this year. Nvidia kicked things off earlier this year with the launch of the low profile Quadro K1200 (4GB).