ATi FirePro V4800 - is this elderly card any good for gaming?

[TheLaserCucumber]

Hi everyone,

I got this FirePro V4800 for free, and thought I test it in some games.

Please note:

I know it wasn't originally intended to do this, but I don't have any productivity programs available.

 

It was tested in the HP Z400 Workstation it came in.

Specs of the Workstation:

Intel Xeon W3530

12GB Unbuffered ECC DDR3-1333

OEM X58 LGA1366 Mainboard

475W 80+ Bronze PSU

 

Specs of the FirePro:

Based on the Redwood core, produced in 40nm

400 Shaders, 20 ROPs, 8 TMUs

1GB of GDDR5, attached to a 128 Bit interface. (57.6GB/s)

GPU Clock: 775MHz

MEM Clock: 900MHz

Supports up to DirectX 11, FL 11_0.

(Basically a Radeon HD5670 with slightly lower clocks)

 

All games (except the two that crashed) were tested with the card overclocked to 950MHz Core and 1000MHz mem.

 

Games tested:

-> GTA V

-> Rise of the Tomb Raider

-> Fallout 4

-> The Forest

-> Planet Coaster

-> Cities:Skylines

-> Also tried CS:GO and Portal 2, but those two crashed on startup.

 

Note: All games were tested in 720p, lowest settings, except Cities:Skylines.

 

 

Tests: 

 

GTA V (InGame Benchmark)

Min: 25

Max: 97

Avg: 61

I also tested it in Singleplayer, all in all it was pretty playable.

Sometimes only some textures were loaded, probably due to only 1GB of VRAM.

 

Rise of the Tomb Raider (InGame Benchmark)

Min: 11

Max: 44

Avg: 25

I think the numbers speak for themselves.

 

Fallout 4 (walking around Diamond City, then heading towards Trinity Tower)

Min: 15

Max: 58

Avg: 41

It was kinda playable. But apart from that Fallout looks absolutely horrible on the lowest settings, it was OK.

 

The Forest (Walking around the Sinkhole)

Min: 26

Max: 41

Avg: 35

I would describe it as playable. But there was nothing built, so keep in mind when you build something, the FPS will be lower.

 

Planet Coaster (Park with 1,500 guests)

Min: 3

Max: 29

Avg: 18

So this wasn't playable. Maybe at a lower resolution, but I wouldn't try it, because it already looked terrible.

 

Cities: Skylines (City with 50K Citizens)

Note: This was the only game that was tested in 1600x900, lowest settings, to avoid a CPU Bottleneck.

Min: 15

Max: 33

Avg: 25

I think it is playable. Cities: Skylines isn't a game were you need particularly high FPS.

Just to say: The VRAM was constantly running full, and the game used more than 10GB of RAM.

 

To end it all up, here's a picture of the card

Because it's a reference card, it has got this really nice red PCB.

 

I hope you all don't buy one of these, as long as you won't use it for more than a display adapter

[arrow9437]

I'm not trying to be competitive or be trying to prove you wrong or anything but I am running an Intel i7 2nd gen processor 16GB ram and a ATI firepro V4800 graphics card and I run GTA v and I play online. borderlands 2 and the pre sequel. and Skyrim fine not sure if those are graphics-intensive games but Skyrim I play on high settings I also play murdered soul suspect and thief and they all run fine on my computer I even use an Xbox controller. Just thought I'd let you know. I also am running Windows 10 pro. Again I'm kind of new to pc gaming  only been doing it for 3 years so I'm not trying to be competitive or prove you wrong. I'm just telling you my experience I would not recommend it for the newer games but for most of the games that I have on my list and some like it yeah I'd recommend it if you have similar specs to mine

[TheLaserCucumber]

On 6/3/2020 at 2:11 PM, arrow9437 said:

I'm not trying to be competitive or be trying to prove you wrong or anything but I am running an Intel i7 2nd gen processor 16GB ram and a ATI firepro V4800 graphics card and I run GTA v and I play online. borderlands 2 and the pre sequel. and Skyrim fine not sure if those are graphics-intensive games but Skyrim I play on high settings I also play murdered soul suspect and thief and they all run fine on my computer I even use an Xbox controller. Just thought I'd let you know. I also am running Windows 10 pro. Again I'm kind of new to pc gaming  only been doing it for 3 years so I'm not trying to be competitive or prove you wrong. I'm just telling you my experience I would not recommend it for the newer games but for most of the games that I have on my list and some like it yeah I'd recommend it if you have similar specs to mine

The Xeon that was built into that machine wasn’t really cutting it in terms of speed, it’s comparable to an i5 2400.

 That, together with only 1333 MHz DDR3 could be changing those numbers.

 

I would put the card into my Ryzen machine and test again, but sadly I don’t have it anymore :(

[arrow9437]

Just got another update to add I am also playing Halo Master Chief collection State of decay 2 Juggernaut edition final fantasy 9 and a few other games I can't think of off the top of my head right now on my computer I had just got them off of Xbox game pass and they all play very good I see no frame drops or anything a few of them I've gotten messages saying my computer is not good enough for them but they seem to run fine for me just thought I'd let you know. And thank you for not thinking that I was trying to prove you wrong or anyting I really wasn't trying to

[drsruli]

In the context of single-slot cards, then this is actually a pretty good card, despite its age. There are only a handful of better ones, that are obtainable.

I did upgrade from the ATI FirePro v4800 to the Quadro K2200. The Quadro is about twice as powerful and can be had relatively easily, for about $80, if one searches. (AND 4GB of GDDR5.) It's more powerful than the GT 1030, for example. There are about 3 or 4 better single-slot cards but they are unobtainable, disproportionately expensive, or both.

 

But in retrospect, I'm still not sure if the upgrade was worth it.