AMD FirePro D700 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 is the clear performance leader, but the AMD FirePro D700 serves a specific legacy workstation role. The RTX 3090 wins every shared benchmark by a massive margin, while the FirePro D700 offers a lower power draw and a different display output configuration. The RTX 3090 is for anyone needing top-tier compute and modern API support; the FirePro D700 is only relevant for older, specialized multi-display setups.

The Verdict

The data presents a decisive outcome: the RTX 3090 is in a different performance class entirely. In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the RTX 3090 scores 172,758 against the FirePro D700’s 23,716, a 628.4% advantage. This is not a close contest; it is a generational gap. The RTX 3090 also leads in Geekbench Vulkan with 53,927 points versus 27,968, a 92.8% difference. The RTX 3090’s average benchmark score of 27,565 places it in the 73rd percentile of all GPUs, while the FirePro D700’s 25,842 average lands in the 71st percentile.

The FirePro D700, however, is not without its own position. Its nearest rival is the AMD FirePro W7100, with a negligible 0.1% difference in average scores. This indicates the D700 is competitive within its own aging workstation generation. The RTX 3090, meanwhile, sits within 1.1% of rivals like the AMD Radeon RX 7800M and the Radeon Pro Vega 20, showing it is still competitive with much newer hardware. For a user with a modern workload, the RTX 3090 is the only rational choice. For someone maintaining a legacy system that requires the FirePro’s specific display outputs, the D700 remains a functional, if outdated, option.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX 3090 wins in every performance metric where both cards have data. Its raw compute capabilities are in a different league. The FirePro D700 has no benchmark wins in the head-to-head comparison; it wins zero tests. Its advantage lies solely in physical attributes. The D700 has a dual-slot cooler compared to the RTX 3090’s triple-slot design, making it easier to fit in constrained chassis. It also draws less power, with a 274 W TDP versus the RTX 3090’s 350 W, and requires a 600 W power supply versus the 750 W suggested for the RTX 3090.

The RTX 3090’s wins are in compute and API compatibility. It supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4, while the D700 supports DirectX 12 (11_1) and Vulkan 1.2.170. The RTX 3090 also has dedicated ray tracing cores and tensor cores, which are absent from the FirePro D700. For any modern gaming, rendering, or machine learning task, the RTX 3090 is the definitive winner. The FirePro D700’s only unique selling point is its six mini-DisplayPort 1.2 outputs and one SDI output, which is a configuration designed for multi-display broadcasting or control room setups that the RTX 3090’s single HDMI and three DisplayPort outputs cannot match.

Architecture Differences

The two cards are separated by nearly a decade of architectural evolution. The RTX 3090 is built on NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture, fabricated on an 8 nm process at Samsung. It contains 28,300 million transistors on a 628 mm² die, yielding a density of 45.1M transistors per mm². The FirePro D700 uses AMD’s GCN 1.0 architecture, manufactured on a 28 nm process at TSMC. It has only 4,313 million transistors on a 352 mm² die, with a density of 12.3M / mm². This explains the massive performance disparity.

The RTX 3090 features 10,496 shading units, 328 TMUs, and 112 ROPs. It also includes 82 RT cores and 328 tensor cores, enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI workloads. Its memory subsystem is a 24 GB GDDR6X pool on a 384-bit bus, delivering 936.2 GB/s of bandwidth. The FirePro D700, in contrast, has 2,048 shading units, 128 TMUs, and only 32 ROPs. It has no RT cores or tensor cores. Its memory is 6 GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus, providing 263.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The D700’s pixel rate is 27.20 GPixel/s and its texture rate is 108.8 GTexel/s, while the RTX 3090 achieves 189.8 GPixel/s and 556.0 GTexel/s respectively.

The RTX 3090’s FP32 compute is 35.58 TFLOPS, and it also offers FP16 at a 1:1 ratio of 35.58 TFLOPS. The FirePro D700 has a peak FP32 of 3.482 TFLOPS and no FP16 data. The bus interface also differs: the RTX 3090 uses PCIe 4.0 x16, while the D700 is limited to PCIe 3.0 x16. The RTX 3090 was released on 2020-08-31, succeeding the GeForce 20 series and preceding the GeForce 40 series. The FirePro D700 launched on 2014-01-17, succeeding FirePro Terascale and preceding Radeon Instinct. Both are now end-of-life products.

FAQ

Q: Which card has more memory bandwidth?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 has a bandwidth of 936.2 GB/s, which is far higher than the AMD FirePro D700’s 263.0 GB/s.

Q: Does the AMD FirePro D700 support hardware ray tracing?

A: No. The FirePro D700 has no ray tracing cores, while the RTX 3090 includes 82 RT cores.

Q: What is the performance difference in Geekbench OpenCL?

A: The RTX 3090 scores 172,758, which is 628.4% higher than the FirePro D700’s score of 23,716.

Q: Can the FirePro D700 handle modern DirectX 12 Ultimate games?

A: No. The FirePro D700 supports DirectX 12 (11_1), while the RTX 3090 supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2).

Q: Which card has more display outputs?

A: The AMD FirePro D700 has six mini-DisplayPort 1.2 outputs and one SDI output. The RTX 3090 has one HDMI 2.1 and three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs.

Q: What is the average benchmark score for each card?

A: The RTX 3090 has an average benchmark score of 27,565, while the FirePro D700 has an average score of 25,842.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head data contains only two tests, but they tell a stark story. In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 3090 scores 172,758 against the D700’s 23,716. This 628.4% delta is the single largest performance gap in the comparison. It reflects the fundamental differences in compute architecture, memory bandwidth, and shading unit count. The RTX 3090’s 10,496 shading units simply dwarf the D700’s 2,048, and its 936.2 GB/s memory bandwidth eliminates any bottleneck the smaller 263.0 GB/s pipe might create.

The second test, Geekbench Vulkan, shows a smaller but still decisive gap. The RTX 3090 scores 53,927, while the D700 scores 27,968. The 92.8% advantage for the RTX 3090 is notable because the D700’s score is proportionally higher here than in OpenCL. This suggests the older GCN architecture is relatively less efficient in OpenCL but performs closer to parity in Vulkan. Still, the RTX 3090’s newer Ampere architecture, with its dedicated tensor and RT cores, provides a massive edge in any modern graphics API.

Looking at the wider benchmark suite for the RTX 3090, its PassMark G3D score is 26,645, and its GPU compute score is 15,356. Its DirectX 12 score is 110, and its DirectX 11 score is 220. The FirePro D700 has no data for these tests, so direct comparison is impossible. However, the RTX 3090’s Geekbench Vulkan score of 53,927 is nearly double the D700’s, which aligns with the 92.8% delta. The RTX 3090 also achieves a 73rd percentile ranking among all GPUs, versus the D700’s 71st percentile, confirming that even by broader metrics, the RTX 3090 holds the higher standing. The RTX 3090’s nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 7800M, is only 1.1% behind in average score, while the D700’s closest competitor, the FirePro W7100, is a mere 0.1% away. This shows the RTX 3090 is competing with modern high-end parts, while the D700 is locked in a battle with its own contemporaries.