Dimitris Tolios Posted April 20, 2013 Share Posted April 20, 2013 (edited) Apply for partitipation, and get a mail-in debit card worth up to 50% of the price paid for a W5000 or W7000 Firepro workstation card. Link to AMD's promotional site. EDIT: Unfortunately for international readers, this is available only in US and Canada markets. Step 1: Apply to participate and request Pre-approval To participate in the new “Experience AMD FirePro” promotion, please apply for your personal pre-approval code to claim up to 50% discount for one purchased AMD FirePro graphics card. Step 2: Purchase qualifying AMD FirePro graphics card Once you have received your pre-approval code, simply purchase either an AMD FirePro W5000 or a W7000 between 25th March 2013 and 30th September 2013. Graphics cards may be purchased as part of a workstation solution or standalone.¹ Step 3: Claim Your Special Discount Complete the online claim form and upload your proof of purchase before the closing date of 15th October 2013. Money back can be claimed on only one qualifying product per customer. Payments will be made via VISA gift cards within 45 days. Edited April 20, 2013 by dtolios Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valtiel Posted April 22, 2013 Share Posted April 22, 2013 yow, that's somethin'. They're really hitting it out of the park with these promotions. Even got me to pull the trigger and pick up a second 7950 with the Never Settle: Reloaded bundle. Bioshock: Infinite is delicious btw. I might check into this one later this year if I come across the cash. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
easy3dsource Posted April 23, 2013 Share Posted April 23, 2013 That's a great deal. Does anyone here have experience using the W7000 with the typical Arch-Viz toolset? For that price I'm almost willing to be a guinea pig myself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlboRegency Posted April 23, 2013 Share Posted April 23, 2013 Damn this is tempting. I'm getting a new pc in June and with the new rumour of GTX 780 coming out in May, I was thinking of getting that, but this card would be about the same price with the discount and probably perform better in revit, max, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackbird Posted May 7, 2013 Share Posted May 7, 2013 How do these cards compare to nVidia/gaming offerings at the 50% price point for 3ds max nitrous viewports (US$215-$375)? Also, are they totally unable to accelerate things like iRay and MassFX? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted May 7, 2013 Author Share Posted May 7, 2013 I expect them to be much much faster. Remember those are the very last generation of FirePros, and AMD claims them being faster than equiv. Quadros (W5000 vs 2000/K2000, W7000 vs. 4000/K4000), which ofc are already noticeably faster than nVidia GTX cards. Depending on the complexity of your scene, that might be a big issue: say 5 fps vs 15 fps is important, 30 fps vs 60 fps is almost a non-issue. My GTX 670 (still a $400+ gaming card) is too often in the low single digits if I decide to be careless switching things off via layers etc. If you are after iRay and MassFX, you are out of luck with AMD. Both use proprietary nVidia technologies/APIs. iRay is actually owned by nVidia altogether, and though it must have a OpenCL element (how does it work with the CPU+GPU in tandem otherwise? honestly I am pulling this out of my head I don't know), I bet nVidia has a lot of vested interests not to switch to "true" OpenCL for as long as it can. The "true" OpenCL is also an issue with VRay RT, where quite a few ppl accuse Chaosgroup to intentionally leaving AMD cards behind, by pretty much running a CUDA "port" through OpenCL instructions. Something that nVidia cards recognize being close to their "native language" and not caring about (perf. differences between CUDA and OpenCL modes in VRay RT GPU for GTX cards is negligible), but AMD cards find too hard to excecute. Most "other" OpenCL accelerated apps and benchmarks give huge performance leads to AMD GCN based cards, something that is also verified by the latest Adobe CS6 OpenCL accelerated modules (switching to OpenCL from CUDA that was their choice in previous versions). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennisdornia Posted May 13, 2013 Share Posted May 13, 2013 (edited) I own a FirePro W7000 Card. I tried Houdini FX, VRayRT - wont work with Win7 Pro x64 - but runs fine with Win8 Pro x64... which is really buggy and unstable. But if you are using Win8 - you will be pretty happy. And if you dont do gpu renders nor gpu simulations you should consider to get a w5000. The AMD support really sucks, i reported some bugs and they cant help me, and even worse...it takes days for them to answer. Next time i will go for NVidia - better 50% of computing performance than 0%. Btw. HD 5870(ASUS MATRIX 2GB) cards run Houdini Sims and VRay RT a bit faster. Max Viewport Performance is close to equal...and... they do work with Win7! EDIT: The AMD support sent me some beta drivers - Houdini FX OpenCL and VRay RT for Maya will work know. VRay RT for 3dsMax will not work. Edited May 16, 2013 by dennisdornia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevinolsen Posted May 16, 2013 Share Posted May 16, 2013 Most "other" OpenCL accelerated apps and benchmarks give huge performance leads to AMD GCN based cards, something that is also verified by the latest Adobe CS6 OpenCL accelerated modules (switching to OpenCL from CUDA that was their choice in previous versions). Where can we find these benchmarks? Getting reviews and objective testing for pro video cards is harder to comeby these days. Unfortunately we have to rely too much on PR material. The w7000 seems like a great deal. I wonder if it's worth the upgrade for me from a nVidia 560ti 2GB? I use Rhino, Revit, 3DS max, Maxwell and Mental Ray are preferred engines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennisdornia Posted May 16, 2013 Share Posted May 16, 2013 Where can we find these benchmarks? Getting reviews and objective testing for pro video cards is harder to comeby these days. Unfortunately we have to rely too much on PR material. The w7000 seems like a great deal. I wonder if it's worth the upgrade for me from a nVidia 560ti 2GB? I use Rhino, Revit, 3DS max, Maxwell and Mental Ray are preferred engines. Hey Kevin, i use a W7000 card. If you like i could benchmark some 3dsmax/mental ray scenes for you. I do not own Rhino, Revit or Maxwell Render. You could send me some scene files and i could say you how much fps the 3dsmax viewport will have. System Setup is: Intel Xeon E3-1240v2 Motherboard with C216 chipset 32GB ECC Memory SSD as primary drive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevinolsen Posted May 16, 2013 Share Posted May 16, 2013 @Dennis Dornia - Wow, thank you very much for offering to help. I'm mostly familiar with Rhino/Maxwell and in the process of learning 3DS/Mental Ray. I will try to get some stuff together to send your way. Thanks again for offering. How do you measure FPS in viewports? I'd like to start testing that for myself as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevinolsen Posted May 17, 2013 Share Posted May 17, 2013 Thank you Dennis, that's a generous offer! I'm still working primarily in Rhino/Maxwell but as soon as I have a workable 3DS file I'd love to see what you get. Side note, how do you measure FPS in viewports? I'd like to test this myself on my laptop/desktop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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