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Workstation Graphics Cards Charts 2023 with Cards from AMD and NVIDIA – Benchmarks of Real Applications and Full Versions, Plus an Efficiency Test

4. December 2023 05:00

Efficiency and power consumption

As this is a roundup, the many details about the individual cards are somewhat out of place here and there would simply be too much content for one article. There will certainly be follow-ups and one or two new details. But today and for these charts, a general overview is of course much more useful.

And how does the power consumption of the cards shape up in different load scenarios? In this context, I consider the light 2D workloads, the medium-heavy 3D shading as well as the rendering and compute tasks separately. I don’t want to create a kind of efficiency index, because the results of the individual programs are much too different for that. Especially in mixed load, NVIDIA is much more efficient than the AMD cards, especially with Ada, even though the current Radeon Pro W7000 have caught up significantly. However, they have unfortunately not yet caught up with NVIDIA. What is generally not liked are the high idle rates of the newer generations of both manufacturers. This has also been much more frugal in the past.

Conclusion after 19 cards

Even though I’m still missing a few cards in the benchmark results, I feel confident enough to draw a preliminary conclusion. AMD has caught up significantly with the Radeon Pro W7000 series, often offering more performance for the same price, as long as you don’t rely on NVIDIA’s feature set, from AI to basic things like CUDA. Unfortunately, solutions with a HIP implementation are still scarce, but Blender at least shows the potential direction. And that brings us to a ‘but’.

Where I see a significant need for driver optimization with AMD is in the various Autodesk suites, where the cards often perform below their potential. Even the impressive performance in Creo or Solidworks is quickly relativized when FSAA is activated, which many do. Nonetheless, RDNA3 is back in the game, and that’s something to acknowledge fairly. Whether through price or not, the performance is often right in many applications, and that’s frequently all that matters. Time is money, and this isn’t about colorful games but real productive use.

And what about Ada? The RTX 6000 Ada, like the GeForce RTX 4090 in gaming, is the real standout. Even an RTX 5000 Ada looks really good, especially when it comes to efficiency. And even the smaller RTX 4000 Ada SFF is a fast card in many respects, even foregoing an extreme power connection. Yes, there are various applications where the performance difference to Ampere and the RTX Axxxx cards is not as significant as one might assume, but the progress is noticeable, especially in the significantly reduced power consumption. The Ada cards once again operate very close to the sweet spot, which naturally also helps with simpler cooling. AMD still has some catching up to do here.

In summary, it can be stated that a lot has happened in 2023 and both graphics card manufacturers have rediscovered the workstation market for themselves. AMD is back, yet NVIDIA has managed to maintain or even expand its lead in certain areas like compute. Much is now highly application-dependent, and as a user, you are more challenged than ever to gather information or test yourself to find out what is truly optimal. Long live the three big “P’s” – Performance, Price, and Product Support… as always.

Best Workstation Graphics Cards 2020 (Update)

PNY RTX 6000 Ada Generation, 48GB GDDR6, 4x DP, Smallbox (VCNRTX6000ADA-SB)

	Zentrallager: verfügbar, Lieferung 3-5 WerktageFiliale Wilhelmshaven: nicht lagerndStand: 09.05.24 07:07	8430,99 €*Stand: 09.05.24 07:14
	siehe Shop	8431,00 €*Stand: 09.05.24 06:02
	lagernd (>5 Stück), Lieferung sofort möglich	8447,81 €*Stand: 09.05.24 07:13