AMD FirePro W5000 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Comparison

The AMD FirePro W5000 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 are both end-of-life graphics cards from an earlier era of GPU design, yet they represent two fundamentally different philosophies. The FirePro W5000 is a professional workstation card built on AMD’s GCN 1.0 architecture, shipping with a 28 nm process and a focus on compute throughput. The GTX 560 is a consumer gaming card from NVIDIA’s Fermi 2.0 generation, built on a larger 40 nm process with a higher memory bandwidth. In the single benchmark available, the Geekbench OpenCL test, the FirePro W5000 scores 9803, while the GTX 560 scores 9058. This gives the AMD card an 8.2% performance advantage, a result that aligns with its higher FP32 throughput and newer architecture. However, the two cards differ so significantly in memory capacity, power requirements, and feature sets that the choice between them depends heavily on the intended workload.

FAQ

Q: Which card is faster in the Geekbench OpenCL benchmark?

A: The AMD FirePro W5000 wins the head-to-head Geekbench OpenCL test with a score of 9803, compared to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560’s score of 9058. This represents an 8.2% performance delta in favor of the AMD card.

Q: How much memory do these cards have, and does it matter?

A: The FirePro W5000 comes with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, delivering 102.4 GB/s of bandwidth. The GTX 560 has only 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory on the same 256-bit bus, but achieves a higher 128.0 GB/s bandwidth due to its faster 4 Gbps effective memory clock. The FirePro has double the capacity, while the GTX 560 has roughly 25% more bandwidth.

Q: What are the power requirements for each card?

A: The AMD FirePro W5000 has a 75 W TDP, requires no power connectors, and suggests a 250 W power supply. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 has a 150 W TDP, requires two 6-pin power connectors, and suggests a 450 W power supply. The GTX 560 draws double the power and demands a significantly beefier PSU.

Q: Do both cards support the same modern APIs?

A: No. The FirePro W5000 supports DirectX 12 (11_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.2.170. The GTX 560 supports DirectX 12 (11_0) and OpenGL 4.6, but has no Vulkan support listed. The AMD card has a slight edge in DirectX feature level and offers Vulkan support, which the NVIDIA card lacks.

Q: How do these cards compare to other GPUs in the benchmark database?

A: The FirePro W5000 sits at the 47th percentile among all GPUs, with its closest rival being the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, which scores 9780 (a 0.2% difference). The GTX 560 sits at the 45th percentile, with its nearest rival being the AMD Radeon 890M, which scores 9210 (a -1.7% difference). Both cards are mid-pack performers, but the FirePro edges out the GTX 560.

Q: What are the physical dimensions and slot requirements?

A: The FirePro W5000 is a single-slot card measuring 183 mm (7.2 inches) in length and 111 mm (4.4 inches) in height. The GTX 560 is a dual-slot card measuring 210 mm (8.3 inches) in length. The GTX 560 is longer and takes up more expansion slots.

Architecture Differences

The architectural divide between these two cards is stark. The AMD FirePro W5000 is built on GCN 1.0, a design that prioritized parallel compute throughput and scalability. It is manufactured on a 28 nm process at TSMC, with a die size of 212 mm² and 2,800 million transistors. This results in a transistor density of 13.2 million per mm². The GTX 560, in contrast, uses NVIDIA’s Fermi 2.0 architecture, which was designed for the GeForce 500 generation. It is built on an older 40 nm process at the same foundry, TSMC, but with a much larger die size of 332 mm² and fewer transistors at 1,950 million. The GTX 560’s transistor density is a sparse 5.9 million per mm², reflecting the less efficient manufacturing node.

The compute resources also differ fundamentally. The FirePro W5000 packs 768 shading units, 48 texture mapping units (TMUs), and 32 raster operation units (ROPs). In contrast, the GTX 560 has only 336 shading units, but a higher count of 56 TMUs, while matching the FirePro with 32 ROPs. This configuration means the GTX 560 has more texture-processing capability per core, but the FirePro has more than double the shading units, which directly impacts its FP32 compute output. The FirePro delivers 1,267.2 GFLOPS of FP32 performance, while the GTX 560 trails at 1,088.6 GFLOPS. The pixel and texture rates tell a mixed story: the FirePro achieves a pixel rate of 26.40 GPixel/s versus 11.34 GPixel/s for the GTX 560, but the GTX 560 counters with a texture rate of 45.36 GTexel/s versus 39.60 GTexel/s for the AMD card.

The memory subsystems reflect the different design goals. The FirePro W5000 uses a 256-bit bus with 2 GB of GDDR5 at a 3.2 Gbps effective speed, yielding 102.4 GB/s of bandwidth. The GTX 560 uses the same 256-bit bus but with only 1024 MB of GDDR5 at a faster 4 Gbps effective speed, yielding a higher 128.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The FirePro’s larger frame buffer is aimed at workstation datasets, while the GTX 560’s narrower but faster memory is tuned for gaming latency.

Where Each One Wins

The AMD FirePro W5000 wins in the only direct head-to-head benchmark, the Geekbench OpenCL test, with an 8.2% margin. This result is consistent with its architectural strengths: the FirePro has more than double the shading units, a 16.4% higher FP32 throughput (1,267.2 GFLOPS versus 1,088.6 GFLOPS), and a newer 28 nm process that allows for better power efficiency per transistor. In compute-heavy workloads such as OpenCL general-purpose processing, the FirePro’s GCN design typically scales better with parallel tasks. Its 2 GB memory capacity also gives it an advantage in applications that need to hold larger datasets on-card, even if the bandwidth is lower than the GTX 560’s.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 wins in specific hardware characteristics rather than benchmark scores. Its memory bandwidth of 128.0 GB/s is 25% higher than the FirePro’s 102.4 GB/s, which could benefit texture-heavy workloads that are sensitive to memory throughput. Its TMU count of 56 versus the FirePro’s 48 gives it a 16.7% advantage in texture fill rate, and indeed the GTX 560 achieves 45.36 GTexel/s versus 39.60 GTexel/s for the AMD card. For legacy gaming scenarios where DX11 is the primary API, the GTX 560’s higher memory bandwidth and texture throughput could theoretically provide better frame rates in texture-bound scenes, though the benchmark data does not directly measure this. The GTX 560 also has a much lower launch MSRP of 199 USD, but that is a historical fact rather than a performance metric.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ across nearly every major specification category. The process node is a key differentiator: the FirePro W5000 uses 28 nm, while the GTX 560 uses 40 nm. Transistor count follows the node trend, with the FirePro packing 2,800 million transistors versus 1,950 million in the GTX 560, despite the NVIDIA die being larger at 332 mm² versus 212 mm². The transistor density is 13.2M / mm² for the AMD card and 5.9M / mm² for the NVIDIA card.

Memory capacity is a clear split: the FirePro has 2 GB, the GTX 560 has 1024 MB. Memory clock speeds also differ, with the FirePro running at 3.2 Gbps effective and the GTX 560 at 4 Gbps effective. This results in the bandwidth gap of 102.4 GB/s versus 128.0 GB/s. The shading unit count is dramatically different at 768 versus 336, as is the TMU count at 48 versus 56, while ROPs are identical at 32.

The power envelope is a major differentiator. The FirePro W5000 has a TDP of 75 W, requires no external power connectors, and suggests a 250 W power supply. The GTX 560 has a TDP of 150 W, requires two 6-pin connectors, and suggests a 450 W power supply. The slot width also differs: the FirePro is single-slot, the GTX 560 is dual-slot. The bus interface is another split: the FirePro uses PCIe 3.0 x16, while the GTX 560 uses PCIe 2.0 x16.

Display outputs differ as well. The FirePro offers 1x DVI and 2x DisplayPort 1.2, while the GTX 560 offers 2x DVI and 1x mini-HDMI 1.3a. API support shows the FirePro with DirectX 12 (11_1) and Vulkan 1.2.170, while the GTX 560 has DirectX 12 (11_0) and no Vulkan support. Both cards support OpenGL 4.6. The physical dimensions vary, with the FirePro measuring 183 mm in length and 111 mm in height, while the GTX 560 measures 210 mm in length.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The only head-to-head benchmark result available is the Geekbench OpenCL test. In this test, the AMD FirePro W5000 scores 9803, while the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 scores 9058. The delta is 8.2%, making the FirePro the clear winner. This margin is substantial in the context of the benchmark database, where the FirePro’s nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, scores 9780, which is only 0.2% lower than the FirePro’s score. Conversely, the GTX 560’s nearest rival, the AMD Radeon 890M, scores 9210, which is 1.7% higher than the GTX 560’s score.

Looking at the percentile rankings, the FirePro W5000 sits at the 47th percentile of all GPUs, while the GTX 560 sits at the 45th percentile. This two-percentile gap reflects the performance difference, but both cards are firmly in the middle of the pack. The FirePro’s score of 9803 places it in the same performance tier as the NVIDIA Quadro M2000M (9832, -0.3% delta) and the NVIDIA Quadro 6000 (9846, -0.4% delta), indicating that it is competitive with professional cards of its era. The GTX 560’s score of 9058 places it near the NVIDIA TITAN V CEO Edition (9037, 0.2% delta) and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (9022, 0.4% delta), showing that it is slightly ahead of older mainstream gaming cards.

The 8.2% advantage for the FirePro is larger than any delta between the GTX 560 and its closest rivals, which range from 0.2% to 1.7%. This suggests that the performance gap between the two cards is not just noise but a real architectural advantage. The FirePro’s higher FP32 throughput and superior shading unit count translate directly into OpenCL compute performance, which is the metric measured here. The GTX 560’s higher memory bandwidth and texture rate, while theoretically beneficial for certain workloads, do not overcome the FirePro’s raw compute advantage in this test.