Recently, Icrontic got to visit AMD Markham, which is where the ATI brand (their graphics division) is headquartered. While there, we sat down with AMD Senior Marketing Manager Alexis Mather and approached him with many questions regarding workstation graphics cards to get real answers from the source.

Alexis explained that there are five major markets that AMD targets: Digital Content Creation (DCC), Computer-Aided Drafting (CAD), financial markets, oil and gas, and scientific (which includes medical and research). DCC is arguably the most well known market thanks to VFX-heavy films and computer animation, but this hardware plays a vital role in the other target markets as well.

Take oil and gas, for instance. At face value, it is difficult to understand why that market would need expensive hardware like this, but the answer makes sense. Oil companies use extremely high-resolution imaging to analyze possible oil fields. Workstation hardware is then used to process this imagery so engineers can assess the quantity of raw material in potential deposits, locate new deposits, and make decisions on where to start drilling. The process is similar to the scene in the beginning of “Jurassic Park” where they used subterranean imaging to locate raptor bones on the excavation site. The point is—you’re alive when they start to eat yo–err… The point is: Many different companies rely on workstation hardware to make very important decisions.

The big questions that so many people ask are: “Can’t I do these things with an equivalent consumer grade desktop GPU purchased at a fraction of the price?” and “what is so different about workstation hardware?”

The hardware

These questions are understandable given that GPUs like the ATI Radeon HD 4870 and the ATI FirePro v8750 appear to have the same GPU (RV770) and hardware configuration, but Alexis explained that there are several significant, but unapparent hardware-level differences.

First and foremost, workstation GPUs are different from desktop GPUs at the ASIC and board level. If you were to place a workstation ASIC (the actual GPU chip) in the equivalent consumer grade board, the card would exhibit different behavior. In other words, the GPU dies are not simply interchangeable.

Alexis continued by explaining that workstation hardware offers features that can’t be benchmarked, but really matter to users and cannot be had on desktop hardware. Such features include 30-bit color depth, framelock/genlock functionality, and hardware stereoscopic output. There are also brand-specific features that carry over from consumer grade GPUs to professional level: Where the ATI FirePro has exclusive technology like Eyefinity, NVIDIA has features like 3Dvision and SLI Multi-OS (the latter found exclusively on NVIDIA Quadro workstation boards). In some cases, both vendors have different implementations of similar technology, like SDI sync.

Reliability

One of the major differences that doesn’t get talked about much is the stability and reliability of the hardware. Workstation GPUs are developed to operate under serious strain for long periods of time. With a workstation card, your system will simply be more stable in high-stress operating environments like 3D rendering. To an artist that must make a deadline, reliability can mean the difference between completing a shot, and losing a significant amount of money (not to mention time).

Support

One of the final differences that Alexis explained to us is the high level of support given to workstation GPU owners. From a development standpoint, AMD works very closely with ISVs and software vendors. This close relationship between software developers and workstation teams assures that software changes won’t compromise hardware performance, and vice versa.

Workstation users also have access to a 24/7 phone support line, so when an artist is pulling overtime and waiting for that final render in the middle of the night, they won’t be left alone when support is needed. This kind of support goes well above and beyond that of the consumer level.

Drivers

Often you will hear people say that drivers alone make the workstation GPUs. Though that is hardly the only difference, workstation drivers do, in fact, receive a significantly higher amount of developmental time and resources. The hardware performs as well as it does because the drivers are finely optimized for many different professional software packages. But what goes into refining the drivers for the professional?

Alexis explained that there are many engineers on the team that work to optimize the hardware’s performance in different graphics packages, and they specifically tweak the hardware to function in a manner that best fits the needs of the professional artist and other target markets.

For example, he talked about the OpenGL engineers and their process of developing the driver. Engineers will actually capture every OpenGL command that is sent to the driver during an application’s operation and then analyze the log to see what the application is trying to get the GPU to do. During analysis, engineers will tweak things like the instruction order to optimize the way a program is interacting with the GPU’s architecture. Studying these nuances allows the driver to achieve outstanding optimization for software performance.

Pricing

So that brings us to the last big question: Why is workstation hardware so expensive? Despite workstation boards sharing similar hardware configurations to their desktop counterparts, the price may be increased significantly, in some cases four-fold. If manufacturing costs are as similar as alleged, are these companies price gouging and taking advantage of the professionals in the industry?

Alexis explained that the additional cost comes from all the exclusive features we have been talking about. It takes an incredible amount of people and time to work so closely with the ISVs to analyze and optimize the software. The resulting certifications are not cheap, Alexis told us, and there are many of people in the background making that process happen. Quite simply, these people need to be paid.

Final thoughts

When you buy a workstation GPU, you’re buying a lot more than just the hardware. You’re buying the peace of mind offered by hardware you know will be stable and reliable, hardware that has been tried and tested not only by its maker and hundreds of engineers, but by the creators of the software you’ll be running on it. That is something that cannot be expressed in terms of dollars.

Workstation GPUs are certainly not for everybody, and for that reason, the general public doesn’t need to know–and rarely knows–the real differences between workstation and desktop hardware. But professionals know that there is so much more to a workstation card than just fast numbers on a spec sheet. When there are thousands on the line in money and expectations alike, these professionals get serious about their tools, and when it comes to graphics hardware, workstation GPUs are worth every single dollar.