What is the market segment for W4100 or W2100? who are the people that do "lightweight 2D and 3D workloads over 1-2 monitors"? Isn't the GPUs that are bundled with Intel's CPUs or AMD's APUs enough for this exact segment? Maybe it's the software support?!
I do 'light' 3D work, think of designing in Rhino and light/simple assemblies in Solidworks. These new, low end/low mid rang cards are excellent replacements for older generations. I'd be happy to upgrade from my V4800 now to a W4100.
Partly software support, yes - for high end photo/graphics work, you might well want a 30bpp display chain (which is currently a workstation card only feature) but not care too much about overall graphics performance.
Just a heads up: the "next-gen" cards in the new Mac Pros have been causing no end of problems for folks in the video production industry. It's at least partially due to a catastrophic screw-up by Apple, but here's hoping that these cards don't introduce the same glitches on PC...
Yep, Apple thought they could circumvent the industry leader (Nvidia) and overcome AMD's driver/support shortcomings with their own in-house support and are learning the hard way. I know there's a purchasing freeze on all new Mac Pros (garbage can design) in our environment right now, the current recommended guidance for anyone needing an upgrade is to upgrade their existing Mac Pro towers with Nvidia Quadro-based solutions.
I fully expect the next Mac Pro to go back to Nvidia-based solutions.
I'm with iwod (not really. He's somewhere, I'm in Alaska) but any chance you can point me as well or link us challenges with the nMP in enterprise, production or computational jobs? I've got a buddy with the Octa/512/7000 and with Premier/AE, FCPx and Davinci with some PS usage he's never been happier. I'm duriuos
It is chizow he's an nvidia fanboy and troll that allways thinks he's got all the anwers and spews only unsustained halftuths or blatant igorant lies... that's the person that's your answer.
Other then that i have seen many 2d designers with light movie editing and light 3d more then happy even with a kaveri... with consumer grade drivers so i can only speculate but even though amd has put only latelly an emphasis on pro line graphics its drivers and software support will only get better.
I have being using several AMD and nV workstation and "gaming" cards and I can say that I like FrePros the least. Awful loud reference cooler with no alternative as Radeon line has and quite bad drivers. Seriously, killing Aero when enabling 10-bit color when on Quadro it just works? When installed both FirePro and Radeon drivers they conflict with each other?! I can see why industry doesn't like FirePro at all even when they are much cheaper than Quardo cards.
So it's the same as it's often been in the past with gamer cards from each vendor:
Price? Often AMD has the edge. Quality? NVIDIA has the edge. Performance? Bounces back & forth.
No wonder pro users tend to favour NVIDIA, since such users are the very people who will be happy to pay extra if necessary for a more stable platform.
Not really. It was only talk about workstation line. For "gaming" line Radeons are better in like everything if you don't touch bad reference coolers. Even drivers: proper OpenCL support, OpenGL is not crippled, 10-bit output is possible,...
Why would you want to run drivers for both since it's a known fact you need to do a completelly clean install when you swith from one to the other. Also why would you run anything in 10bit color scheme? Just curious!
Drivers: because I usually want 2 cards installed: cheap workstation for workstation-quality specifics in programs and "gaming" for compute workload. With nV you can even install just one "gaming" driver and it would recognize workstation card (and even with most workstation features working anyway), with AMD you have to install separate ones and they are way less happy to work together than nV ones.
10-bit: not sure what your question is about, 10-bit is per component, so total is 30-bit color which is obviously better than 24-bit for capable applications.
Well, i have no idea how the 2 driversets work together but i suspect that this problem is due to the less matured pro line drivers. AMDs pro line is after all a newish effort. As to the 10bit i'm still not 100% i got it, true collors use 32bit definitions and is way out of human spectrum. I don't think there are more then 10 people on the planet capable of making a distinction between 1 increment of shade in 32bit. Also i don't think normal people can distinct 16bit shades at 1 increment distance. Anyway should't the number be something like 10.6.. bit/chanel? A round 30bit souns really odd since it's not divisible by 8... just saying. That is why the question.
There is no 32-bit color. "32-bit" is actually 24-bit color + 8 bit wasted for padding (or alpha where it's needed). 10-bit per channel is still packed in 32-bit, but for padding/alpha only 2 bits are used.
Plenty of people can distinguish 8-bit and 10-bit gradients easily (on good monitor, of course). And in special circumstances I can even distinguish individual steps of 10-bit gradient, so it's not a limit of human eye perception yet.
Even though it doesn't matter since it will be in a case, that W7100 is a fantastic looking card. So sleek and slim for something of that performance level (presumably at or above the R9 280X).
I agree. I have a 6950 I've been wanting to replace. This will probably give better performance, in a 1 slot design (that's rare to find now). And if I could SLI them...
Well... seeing as it will be in a server and the server in a datacenter... who cares :D. Other then that using a server gpu in non server environment might prove fatal to the gpu lol. You usually maintain a chilling 7-15 C (if it is not a special purpose datacenter in which case temperatures can go a lot sub 0 C) in a datacenter so the air passing through is really cool, if you suddenly pass summer air through it you would most likelly fry it.
Still think AMD could release an APU to cater for the W4100 market and down AMD Opteron APU with Fire Pro graphics (and drivers) Charge 3 X the price for the same spec AMD A series with radeon graphics enough cpu and gpu for entry level CAD
A ps4 specced apu with ecc and ddr4 and 4 steamroller cores instead of the 8 jaguars or alternativelly 8 4-5 ghz puma+ cores would make for a genius entry level workstation and get rid of the absolute low end fire pro line
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Shinshin - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
What is the market segment for W4100 or W2100? who are the people that do "lightweight 2D and 3D workloads over 1-2 monitors"?Isn't the GPUs that are bundled with Intel's CPUs or AMD's APUs enough for this exact segment?
Maybe it's the software support?!
nevertell - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
There are workstations that use CPUs without integrated graphics. Take a look at lga2011.Shinshin - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
You're right... I haven't thought about LGA2011...6129(15) - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
I do 'light' 3D work, think of designing in Rhino and light/simple assemblies in Solidworks. These new, low end/low mid rang cards are excellent replacements for older generations. I'd be happy to upgrade from my V4800 now to a W4100.PhoenixEnigma - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
Partly software support, yes - for high end photo/graphics work, you might well want a 30bpp display chain (which is currently a workstation card only feature) but not care too much about overall graphics performance.Derjis - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
Just a heads up: the "next-gen" cards in the new Mac Pros have been causing no end of problems for folks in the video production industry. It's at least partially due to a catastrophic screw-up by Apple, but here's hoping that these cards don't introduce the same glitches on PC...chizow - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
Yep, Apple thought they could circumvent the industry leader (Nvidia) and overcome AMD's driver/support shortcomings with their own in-house support and are learning the hard way. I know there's a purchasing freeze on all new Mac Pros (garbage can design) in our environment right now, the current recommended guidance for anyone needing an upgrade is to upgrade their existing Mac Pro towers with Nvidia Quadro-based solutions.I fully expect the next Mac Pro to go back to Nvidia-based solutions.
akdj - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
I'm with iwod (not really. He's somewhere, I'm in Alaska) but any chance you can point me as well or link us challenges with the nMP in enterprise, production or computational jobs? I've got a buddy with the Octa/512/7000 and with Premier/AE, FCPx and Davinci with some PS usage he's never been happier. I'm duriuostcube - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
It is chizow he's an nvidia fanboy and troll that allways thinks he's got all the anwers and spews only unsustained halftuths or blatant igorant lies... that's the person that's your answer.Other then that i have seen many 2d designers with light movie editing and light 3d more then happy even with a kaveri... with consumer grade drivers so i can only speculate but even though amd has put only latelly an emphasis on pro line graphics its drivers and software support will only get better.
iwod - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
Wow, any links? Google Search turns up garbage.Senti - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
I have being using several AMD and nV workstation and "gaming" cards and I can say that I like FrePros the least. Awful loud reference cooler with no alternative as Radeon line has and quite bad drivers. Seriously, killing Aero when enabling 10-bit color when on Quadro it just works? When installed both FirePro and Radeon drivers they conflict with each other?! I can see why industry doesn't like FirePro at all even when they are much cheaper than Quardo cards.mapesdhs - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
So it's the same as it's often been in the past with gamer cards from each vendor:
Price? Often AMD has the edge.
Quality? NVIDIA has the edge.
Performance? Bounces back & forth.
No wonder pro users tend to favour NVIDIA, since such users are the very people who
will be happy to pay extra if necessary for a more stable platform.
Ian.
Senti - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
Not really. It was only talk about workstation line.For "gaming" line Radeons are better in like everything if you don't touch bad reference coolers. Even drivers: proper OpenCL support, OpenGL is not crippled, 10-bit output is possible,...
tcube - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
Why would you want to run drivers for both since it's a known fact you need to do a completelly clean install when you swith from one to the other. Also why would you run anything in 10bit color scheme? Just curious!Senti - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
Drivers: because I usually want 2 cards installed: cheap workstation for workstation-quality specifics in programs and "gaming" for compute workload. With nV you can even install just one "gaming" driver and it would recognize workstation card (and even with most workstation features working anyway), with AMD you have to install separate ones and they are way less happy to work together than nV ones.10-bit: not sure what your question is about, 10-bit is per component, so total is 30-bit color which is obviously better than 24-bit for capable applications.
tcube - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
Well, i have no idea how the 2 driversets work together but i suspect that this problem is due to the less matured pro line drivers. AMDs pro line is after all a newish effort. As to the 10bit i'm still not 100% i got it, true collors use 32bit definitions and is way out of human spectrum. I don't think there are more then 10 people on the planet capable of making a distinction between 1 increment of shade in 32bit. Also i don't think normal people can distinct 16bit shades at 1 increment distance. Anyway should't the number be something like 10.6.. bit/chanel? A round 30bit souns really odd since it's not divisible by 8... just saying. That is why the question.Senti - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
There is no 32-bit color. "32-bit" is actually 24-bit color + 8 bit wasted for padding (or alpha where it's needed). 10-bit per channel is still packed in 32-bit, but for padding/alpha only 2 bits are used.Plenty of people can distinguish 8-bit and 10-bit gradients easily (on good monitor, of course). And in special circumstances I can even distinguish individual steps of 10-bit gradient, so it's not a limit of human eye perception yet.
tcube - Thursday, August 14, 2014 - link
Thanks for the info & explanation, i think i got it now!nathanddrews - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
Even though it doesn't matter since it will be in a case, that W7100 is a fantastic looking card. So sleek and slim for something of that performance level (presumably at or above the R9 280X).hechacker1 - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
I agree. I have a 6950 I've been wanting to replace. This will probably give better performance, in a 1 slot design (that's rare to find now). And if I could SLI them...Senti - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
You are probably missing that W7100 would be LOUD. There is a reason powerful videocards are made in 2-3 slot designs nowadays.tcube - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link
Well... seeing as it will be in a server and the server in a datacenter... who cares :D. Other then that using a server gpu in non server environment might prove fatal to the gpu lol. You usually maintain a chilling 7-15 C (if it is not a special purpose datacenter in which case temperatures can go a lot sub 0 C) in a datacenter so the air passing through is really cool, if you suddenly pass summer air through it you would most likelly fry it.Tikcus9666 - Tuesday, August 12, 2014 - link
Still think AMD could release an APU to cater for the W4100 market and downAMD Opteron APU with Fire Pro graphics (and drivers)
Charge 3 X the price for the same spec AMD A series with radeon graphics
enough cpu and gpu for entry level CAD
tcube - Wednesday, August 13, 2014 - link
A ps4 specced apu with ecc and ddr4 and 4 steamroller cores instead of the 8 jaguars or alternativelly 8 4-5 ghz puma+ cores would make for a genius entry level workstation and get rid of the absolute low end fire pro lineatlantico - Thursday, August 14, 2014 - link
The price/performance ratio of FirePro GPUs is the best in the market now, as is the OpenCL performance. Competition is good.K_Space - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link
Rumor has it that Tonga will be the GPU codename for the R9 285, Source Videocardz.c plus plus - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link
i love amd gpusSpitz - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
There is a typo in the graph. The W4100 only has 2GB of VRAM, not the indicated 4GB