AMD Firepro W8000 and W9000 Professional Graphics Cards Reviewed

SPECapc Autodesk Maya 2012

Just this week, SPECapc released the Autodesk Maya 2012 benchmark! SPECapc for Maya 2012 includes 50 individual tests that reflect the processes used to model, animate and render scenes within the application. A particular emphasis is placed on testing performance for large texture sizes and multiple viewports. The following new features are included in SPECapc for Maya 2012:

• Additional tests that measure CPU-intensive tasks beyond rendering, including physics-based simulations such as liquid, smoke, cloth, hair and deformation.
• Performance tests for three types of rendering mental ray, Maya Software and Maya Hardware 2.0.
• Composite scores that are weighted to better reflect performance of shading and texturing features most used by Maya customers.
• Upgrades associated with the migration from Maya 2009 to Maya 2012.

We installed Maya 2013 and ran the Autodesk Maya 2012 benchmark by SPECapc to see how the AMD FirePro workstation cards handle this new benchmark.

In the 2012 version of the SPECapc Maya benchmark, we found that this generation of workstation cards are faster than the previous generation. The AMD FirePro W8000 had an overall composite (weighted geomean) score of 3.75 versus the 3.09 of the AMD FirePro V8800 that it replaces in the product lineup. This is a performance improvement of about 21%.