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ATI FirePro V9800P

ATI FirePro V9800P in 2025: Nostalgia or Relevance?

Professional GPU in the Era of New Technologies

Introduction

In 2025, when the GPU market is overflowing with ray-tracing cards and neural network technologies, the ATI FirePro V9800P seems like a relic of the past. However, this professional graphics card, released by AMD in 2010, still finds use in niche scenarios. Let's explore who can benefit from it today and what compromises need to be accepted.

Architecture and Key Features

TeraScale 2: The Foundation of Stability

The FirePro V9800P is built on the TeraScale 2 architecture, manufactured using a 40nm process. Unlike modern RDNA 4 or Ada Lovelace architectures, it lacks support for RTX, DLSS, or FidelityFX. However, its hallmark is optimization for professional applications and stable Enterprise-class drivers.

Unique Features for Its Time

- Eyefinity: Support for up to 6 displays simultaneously — relevant for surveillance systems or digital signage.

- App Acceleration: Hardware acceleration for OpenCL 1.1 and DirectCompute.

Memory: Endurance vs. Speed

GDDR5: 4 GB for Basic Tasks

The card is equipped with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory with a 256-bit bus. The bandwidth is 147 GB/s. This is insufficient for modern 3D rendering or neural networks, but it is adequate for CAD applications from the 2010s.

Limitations in 2025

- Insufficient capacity for working with 8K textures.

- Low speed compared to GDDR6X (up to 1000 GB/s on the RTX 5080) or HBM3.

Gaming Performance: Retro Gaming

Average FPS in Older Titles (1080p):

- The Witcher 3: ~25 FPS (on low settings).

- GTA V: ~30 FPS (medium settings).

- Modern AAA titles (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty) — less than 15 FPS even at 720p.

Resolution Support:

- 1080p: Acceptable for games up to 2015.

- 4K: Not recommended — lack of memory and computational power.

Ray Tracing: No hardware support.

Professional Tasks: Where It Still Holds Up

3D Modeling and Rendering

- Compatible with AutoCAD 2020, SolidWorks 2019 (newer versions may not be supported).

- Rendering in Blender Cycles (via OpenCL) is 2-3 times slower than the Radeon Pro W7600 (2023).

Video Editing:

- Streaming Full HD editing in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2021 — without issues.

- 4K or NeRF effects — cannot handle.

Scientific Calculations:

- Support for OpenCL 1.1 limits its use in modern simulations.

- CUDA is not available — this is NVIDIA's ecosystem.

Power Consumption and Thermal Output

TDP 225 W: System Requirements

- Recommended power supply: 600 W (allowing for overhead for other components).

- Cooling system: single-fan turbine. Noise level — up to 42 dB under load.

Build Tips:

- Case with good ventilation (at least 3 fans).

- Avoid compact SFF builds — the card takes up two slots.

Comparison with Competitors

Against Contemporaries (2025):

- NVIDIA RTX A2000 (12 GB): 3 times faster in rendering, supports DLSS 3.5, starting price $600.

- Radeon Pro W7600 (8 GB): Consumes 130 W, OpenCL computation speed is 5 times higher.

Against Peers from Its Time (2010):

- NVIDIA Quadro 5000: Better optimization for CUDA, but worse multi-display configuration.

Practical Tips

Power Supply: At least 600 W with 80+ Bronze certification. Example: Corsair CX650M ($75).

Compatibility:

- Motherboard with PCIe 2.0 x16 (backward compatible with PCIe 4.0/5.0).

- Not suitable for newer processors without Legacy mode UEFI.

Drivers: Use the "Enterprise" branch from AMD (latest version — 2021).

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Reliability in legacy professional software.

- Support for 6 displays.

- Low secondary market price ($50-80).

Cons:

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

- High power consumption.

- Limited compatibility with new software.

Conclusion: Who is the FirePro V9800P Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Retro PC enthusiasts building systems based on 2010s OS and software.

2. Budget studios using outdated versions of CAD software.

3. Digital signage or information kiosks, where multi-display support is more important than performance.

In 2025, the FirePro V9800P is a specialized tool rather than a universal solution. If you need power for modern tasks, consider the Radeon Pro W7000 series or NVIDIA RTX A4000. But if you value proven stability and work within a "frozen" software environment — this card may still surprise you.

Basic

Label Name

ATI

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

September 2010

Model Name

FirePro V9800P

Generation

FirePro

Bus Interface

PCIe 2.0 x16

Transistors

2,154 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

40 nm

Architecture

TeraScale 2

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

4GB

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

1150MHz

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.

147.2 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.

27.20 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.

68.00 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.

544.0 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.

2.666 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.

1600

L1 Cache

8 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

512KB

TDP

225W

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

1.2

OpenGL

4.4

DirectX

11.2 (11_0)

Power Connectors

1x 8-pin

Shader Model

5.0

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

550W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

2.666 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Quadro T1200 Mobile

2.86 +7.3%

GeForce MX550

2.757 +3.4%

FirePro V9800P

2.666

T600 Mobile

2.578 -3.3%

GeForce GTX 760 X2

2.519 -5.5%