By @Xi Computer Corp.
 

For more than 25 years, @Xi Computer has spent countless hours designing, building and perfecting workstations to meet the challenging demands of applications like AutoCAD, Pro/E, SolidWorks, CATIA and many others. @Xi Computer looks at all aspects of the system to optimize the workstation to meet and exceed the demanding needs of their professional users. One aspect in designing a well rounded workstation is to look at the video card. In this video card review, you can decide whether you are under spending or over spending when it comes to selecting a video card for your workstation.

@Xi Computer Corp. used the Xi® MTower™ PCIe Workstation to test various types of professional level video cards. The test system is housed in the Cooler Master HAF XM case. The case gives superior ventilation for the Intel I7-3770K processor that has been over clocked from its core speed of 3.5GHz to 4.5GHz. In order to keep balance with the CPU, the memory installed in the system is 16GB of 1866MHz DuaL Channel DDR3 memory. The Asus P8Z77-V Pro motherboard installed supports up to 32GB of memory and has many features that will meet most professional user needs. For the installation of the Operating System and Applications, the Neutron Series™ GTX 240GB SATA 3 6Gb/s SSD was selected for it performance. A secondary 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 64MB Cache drive was installed in the system for DATA. All powered by a Corsair 850 Watt power supply.

The video cards that will be tested include the following: Quadro 2000, Quadro 4000, Quadro 2000K, Quadro 4000K, Quadro 5000K, AMD FirePro™ V4900, AMD FirePro™ W5000, AMD FirePro™ W7000. The test suite that we are using is the SPECviewperf 11 by the The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC). All tests were conducted at a resolution of 1920x1080 and the test defaults were not changed. See Figure 1 listed below for a graphic representation of the results.

Figure 1

As you can see from Figure 2, the fastest video card from Figure 1 is the Quadro K5000.

Figure 2

Depending on the application that you are using, you can select a video card that will give you the most bang for the buck. Figure 1 shows that if you are running applications like CATIA, Ensight, TCVIS and SNX there is a performance difference between the fastest video card and the next fastest video card. If you are budget constrained to a certain amount and need to get the most for your buck, you can see that the third and fourth and in some cases the second fastest video cards are within a few performance points of each other. Therefore, instead of over spending, you can optimize the video performance to your needs. Remember, just because you have the fastest and most expensive video card, does not mean you have the fastest system. You need to balance the power between all the components to achieve a truly fast system. That is what @Xi Computer Corp. does best. The test system configured with a Quadro K2000 is priced at $2,719.00. for more information. The same system configured with a Quadro K5000 is priced at $4089.00. For further information, visit www.xicomputer.com or contact one of our Sales Consultants at 800-432-0486 or via email at

By @Xi Computer Corp.
sales@xicomputer.com
Published on April 26, 2013

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