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How We Test AMD's FirePro W8100

AMD FirePro W8100 Review: The Professional Radeon R9 290
By

Test Systems and Environment

For this story, we don't overclock Intel's Core i7-4930K, since the workstation world is very stability-sensitive. As a result, our processor runs at a base close rate of 3.5 GHz. But this machine's test system does sport three SSDs now. We keep the operating system separate from the benchmark suite binaries and data logs.

Normally, we would only test with drivers approved by each ISV. However, this isn’t possible for a brand-new card, so we had to use the latest driver available for AMD's FirePro W8100 (refer to table).

The power draw measurements deserve a section of their own, and we're eager to find out if the AMD FirePro W8100 is really in the sweet spot of AMD's line-up.

Here's the list of hardware we're using for benchmarking:

Lab Bench
Microcool Banchetto 101
System
Intel Core i7-4930K (Ivy Bridge-E), 3.5 GHz (6C/12T)
Asus Rampage IV Black Edition
64 GB Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR3-2133 at 1600 MT/s
Corsair H105i Closed-Loop Liquid Cooler
1x 256 GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD (System, Applications)
Video Editing / Workloads
1x 480 GB Corsair Neutron GX SSD (Input)
1x 500 GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD (Output)
Power Supply (PSU)
1200 W be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 (Slightly Modified to Measure Voltages)
Operating Systems
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (Professional Applications, Computing)
Microsoft Windows 8 Professional x64 (Gaming)
Drivers
Catalyst Pro 13.352.1009 Certified
Nvidia Quadro Desktop Driver 334.95
Environment
22 °C Ambient Temperature, Held Stable via Air Conditioning


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  • 0 Hide
    Nuckles_56 , 30 July 2014 08:33
    "It almost catches up to the GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3 GB as well, cutting the consumer card’s 14-percent lead down to only two percent. "

    This should be the GTX 780 instead
  • 0 Hide
    mi1ez , 30 July 2014 22:45
    Quote:
    Even the reference cooler appears to remain the same, which is somewhat disappointing next to Nvidia's redesigned Quadro cards.


    1: it's a workstation card.
    2: I quite like it.