AMD FirePro V3900: Pro Performance, Bargain Price

Newtek's Lightwave 3D is a  3D rendering program that supports both Macs and PCs. It was used to create the special effects for classic shows like Star Trek and Babylon 5, and films like the upcoming Iron Sky and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

Lightwave 3D 9.6: 3D Rendering and Animation

SPEC describes its benchmark as follows: "The benchmark...  contains 11 datasets -- ranging from 64,000 to 1.75 million polygons -- and representing such applications as 3D character animation, architectural review, and industrial design. Scores for individual workloads are composited under three categories: interactive, render and multitask."

Performance is normalized against a stock configuration; a score of 3.0 means that the testbed completed a task 3x faster than the original system.

We were surprised at how little difference we saw in Lightwave 9.6; especially since the Lightwave benchmark in SpecViewPerf showed a 13% performance improvement for the FirePro V3900 over its older cousin. This is evidence of how workload choice can impact whether the CPU or GPU is a limiting factor, even within the same program. The 6870 wins the Interactive test by a hair, the other two tests are essentially a tie.