AMD Radeon PRO W7800 & W7900 Workstation Performance Review

Of the eight pieces of software that these viewport tests revolve around, 3ds Max and Maya typically offer the highest level of neutrality when it comes to the workstation vs. gaming driver question. Because of that, results like what we see in 3ds Max above closely match how you’d expect them to scale based on their paper specs (and lightly on how they compare in gaming).

Looking at the subtests once again, we can see that NVIDIA tends to be stronger with the Realistic and Realistic + Materials modes, while AMD’s wireframe performance is nearly double NVIDIA’s. This becomes another benefit of looking at the subtest results, because the overall score simply doesn’t tell you anything about why they score as they do.

All of the likely candidates are pinned to the top of the Maya overall score chart, with the differences at the top being modest, and the bottom end proving once again that VRAM matters.

These subtest results show NVIDIA to be stronger than the others in the AO tests. Interestingly, we see a repeat of what we saw in our 3ds Max test: AMD’s wireframe performance beats out the others. Better wireframe performance might seem a bit boring, but it’s a mode that needs optimization to deliver good performance in complex projects. Our Blender testing has shown that when unoptimized, wireframe performance can be abysmal even in modest projects.

The Radeon PRO W7900 had no problem leaping to the top of this Energy chart. This is a workload that benefits a bit on professional drivers, but more so on the NVIDIA side than the AMD one.

AMD and NVIDIA perform similarly in the F3 Netherlands and Opunake volume tests, while AMD shows strengths in the Black Ridge workloads. What more is there to say? We feel more awake after looking at that chart.

Want to avoid being the person braindead enough to choose the wrong hardware to scan brains with? No matter; these results show that AMD’s Radeons are the brainiest of them all, with the Radeon PRO W7900 leaping a good distance ahead of the rest of the pack.

When comparing GPUs at similar price points, it really is impressive how strong the performance ends up being on the Radeon side.

This wraps-up our look at viewport performance. The next page will cover video encoding and photogrammetry. If neither are relevant, hit up the rendering and conclusions page.