Home / ATI / ATI FirePro V8700: Performance and Specs

ATI FirePro V8700

ATI FirePro V8700: A Professional Tool in the World of GPUs

April 2025

Introduction

The ATI FirePro V8700 graphics card, released in 2009, remains a legend among professional graphics solutions. Despite its age, it is still used in niche tasks where stability and accuracy are paramount. However, in 2025, its capabilities should be assessed through the lens of modern requirements. In this article, we will explore what makes the V8700 interesting today, how it handles tasks, and who might still find it useful.

1. Architecture and Key Features

TeraScale 2 Architecture

The FirePro V8700 is built on the TeraScale 2 architecture (RV770), which provided a breakthrough in parallel computing at its time. The manufacturing process is 55 nm, which seems archaic by today's standards (compare this to the 5 nm used in RDNA 4).

Professional Optimization

This card is designed for CAD applications and 3D rendering. It supports 10-bit color, ECC memory for error protection, and interfaces like DisplayPort 1.1.

Lack of Modern Gaming Technologies

No RTX, DLSS, or FidelityFX here — these features emerged a decade later. Ray tracing and AI upscaling are not available due to hardware limitations.

2. Memory: Reliability vs. Speed

GDDR5: Modest Capacities

The memory capacity is 1 GB GDDR5 with a 256-bit bus. The bandwidth is 108.8 GB/s. While this is insufficient for modern 3D scenes or 4K textures, it suffices for older CAD projects.

ECC Memory

Error correction is critical in scientific calculations, but it increases latency. In gaming, ECC is useless, which is why the FirePro lags behind its gaming counterparts in speed.

3. Gaming Performance: Nostalgia in Frames

Average FPS in Older Projects

In games from 2008-2012 (e.g., Crysis, Skyrim), the V8700 achieves 30-45 FPS at 1080p (low settings). In modern AAA titles (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077), the card is unplayable — yielding less than 10 FPS even at 720p.

Resolutions

- 1080p: Only suitable for light projects like CS:GO (up to 60 FPS on low settings).

- 1440p/4K: Not recommended due to lack of memory and computing power.

Ray Tracing

There is no hardware support. Software implementations (e.g., in Blender) run extremely slowly.

4. Professional Tasks: Where the V8700 is Still Relevant

3D Modeling and Rendering

In Autodesk Maya or SolidWorks, the card demonstrates stability thanks to optimized drivers. However, more memory is required for complex scenes with 4K textures.

Video Editing

1080p video editing is possible in Adobe Premiere Pro, but rendering takes 3-4 times longer than on modern GPUs.

Scientific Calculations

Support for OpenCL 1.1 allows the card to be used for simple simulations. However, it is unsuitable for machine learning or neural networks — lacking libraries like CUDA and having poor performance.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Generation

TDP and Power Supply

The TDP is 208 W — this requires an 8-pin connector and a power supply of at least 500 W.

Cooling

The noisy cooler is a weak point. For quiet operation, it is recommended to replace it with liquid cooling or install it in a case with good ventilation.

Case Compatibility

The card's length is 25 cm. It fits in most ATX cases, but compact builds may encounter issues.

6. Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA Quadro FX 5800 (2008)

A competitor with 4 GB GDDR3. It performs better in tasks with large textures, but it is more expensive.

Modern Alternatives (2025)

- NVIDIA RTX A2000: 12 GB GDDR6, supports RTX, priced from $600.

- AMD Radeon Pro W6600: 8 GB GDDR6, 28 TFLOPS, priced at $649.

The FirePro V8700 falls short compared to these, except for price — it can be found on the second-hand market for $50-80.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply

At least 500 W with an 80+ Bronze certification. Example: Corsair CX550.

Compatibility with Platforms

- Motherboards: Requires PCIe 2.0 x16. Compatible with modern PCIe 4.0/5.0, but with speed limitations.

- Drivers: The latest versions for Windows 10/11 are available on AMD's website, but updates ceased in 2022.

Usage Nuances

- Avoid gaming drivers — they are not optimized for FirePro.

- For Linux, open-source Mesa drivers are suitable, but functionality is limited.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros

- High reliability and stability.

- Support for ECC memory.

- Low price on the second-hand market.

Cons

- Outdated architecture.

- Small memory capacity.

- High power consumption.

- No support for modern APIs (DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.3).

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the FirePro V8700 Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Retro PC Enthusiasts assembling systems from the Core 2 Quad era.

2. Budget Studios needing a reliable GPU for working with legacy software (e.g., older versions of AutoCAD).

3. Educational Institutions where basic 3D modeling is sufficient.

In 2025, the FirePro V8700 is a museum piece that sometimes finds use in narrow scenarios. For serious tasks, it’s better to look at the Radeon Pro W7000 or NVIDIA RTX A4000. However, if you appreciate the history of technology or are looking for a temporary solution at a bargain, the V8700 can still surprise.

Basic

Label Name

ATI

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

September 2008

Model Name

FirePro V8700

Generation

FirePro

Bus Interface

PCIe 2.0 x16

Transistors

956 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

55 nm

Architecture

TeraScale

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

1024MB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

256bit

Memory Clock

850MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

108.8 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

12.00 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

30.00 GTexel/s

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

240.0 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

1.176 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

800

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

256KB

TDP

151W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

N/A

OpenCL Version

1.1

OpenGL

3.3

DirectX

10.1 (10_1)

Power Connectors

2x 6-pin

Shader Model

4.1

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

450W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.176 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

FirePro V8700 Duo

1.224 +4.1%

Radeon R9 M275

1.208 +2.7%

FirePro V8700

1.176

FirePro W5170M

1.16 -1.4%

Quadro K4000M

1.131 -3.8%