(Test) NVIDIA Quadro P5000 vs GeForce GTX 1080

Article index

• 1 – Overview
• 2 – Quadro P5000 Gallery
• 3 – Quadro P5000 GPU Data
• 4 – Benchmarks: Quadro P5000 vs GeForce GTX 1080
• 4.1 – Preparation
• 4.2 – SPECviewperf 12.1
• 4.3 – LuxMark 3.1
• 4.4 – CineBench R15.0
• 4.5 – FurMark 1.19
• 4.6 – Unigine Superposition
• 4.7 – GeeXLab: heavy pixel shader test
• 4.8 – GeeXLab: two sided lighting test
• 5 – Burn-in Test
• 6 – Conclusion

4 – Benchmarks: Quadro P5000 vs GeForce GTX 1080

4.1 – Preparation

Here we are: the P5000 vs GTX 1080 battle.

Testbed:
– CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700 (default clock speed)
– Motherboard: MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon
– RAM: 16GB DDR4 Corsair Dominator Platinum @ 2666MHz
– PSU: Corsair AX860i
– Windows 10 64-bit Creators Update
– Driver: GeForce/Quadro 382.05

For this performance test, I used the following graphics tools:

– SPECviewperf 12.1
– LuxMark 3.1
– CineBench R15.0
– FurMark 1.19
– Unigine Superposition
– GeeXLab: heavy Shadertoy pixel shader test
– GeeXLab: old OpenGL two sided lighting test…

For the GTX 1080, I used the ASUS Strix GTX 1080. This card has a boost clock speed of 1936MHz and a memory clock speed of 5005MHz. In order to compare apples with apples, I downclocked the GTX 1080 with MSI Afterburner: -203MHz for the GPU core and -492MHz for the memory.

 

4.2 – SPECviewperf 12.1

The SPECviewperf test has no end… it lasts hours and hours… no I’m joking but it’s a long graphics benchmark. The GTX 1080 and the P5000 have similar results in 3dsMax and showcase-01 tests. The GTX 1080 is faster in Maya. But with Catia, creo-01, energy-01, medical-01, snx-02 (Siemens NX) and sw-03 (SolidWorks), the Quadro P5000 is much more faster than the GTX 1080. Especially in the snx-02 test which is a CAD test, the difference is just insane…

More information about SPECviewperf can be found HERE.

– GeForce GTX 1080 scores:

– Quadro P5000 scores:

The SNX-02 test:

 

4.3 – LuxMark 3.1

LuxMark is an OpenCL benchmark. There are 3 tests: light (LuxBall HDR), medium (Neumann TLM) and heavy (Hotel lobby).

The P5000 is slightly faster than the GTX 1080 in two tests and the GTX 1080 is faster in the heavy test…

– LuxBall HDR:

12238 – Quadro P5000

11286 – GTX 1080

– Neumann TLM:

7143 – Quadro P5000

6625 – GTX 1080

– Hotel lobby:

3356 – GTX 1080

3323 – Quadro P5000

 

4.4 – CineBench R15.0

CineBench is a graphics benchmark based on Cinema4D. Here are the OpenGL benchmark results:

90.08 FPS – Quadro P5000

87.6 FPS – GTX 1080

Like with LuxMark, there is no significant difference between the P5000 and the GTX 1080.

 

4.5 – FurMark 1.19

FurMark 1.19 can be download from THIS PAGE.

– Preset 1080

6559 points / 109 FPS – GTX 1080

6355 points / 106 FPS – Quadro P5000

There is no important difference between the P5000 and the GTX 1080, but the GTX 1080 is faster.

 

4.6 – Unigine Superposition

Superposition is the new graphics benchmark from the Unigine team. I covered it in THIS ARTICLE.

– 1080P Medium Direct3D

14534 points / 108 FPS – GTX 1080

14316 points / 107 FPS – Quadro P5000

The scores are similar to FurMark ones: no important difference but the GTX 1080 is faster.

 

4.7 – GeeXLab: heavy pixel shader test

This test is a pure pixel shader test with GeeXLab. I selected the Shadertoy Elephant demo with is very heavy. This pixel shader demo can be found in GeeXLab code sample pack in the gl-21/shadertoy-multipass/gl21-elephant/ folder.

– GeeXLab + Shadertoy Elephant multi-pass demo, 1280×720

30 FPS – GTX 1080

26 FPS – Quadro P5000

 

4.8 – GeeXLab: two sided lighting test

Here is an very interesting test I coded after the reading of this article. Two side lighting… Behind these three words, we find this old fixed pipeline function of OpenGL 1.2:

glLightModeli(GL_LIGHT_MODEL_TWO_SIDE, GL_TRUE);

Many CAD softwares render meshes with illumination performed on both sides of a polygon. Each side can have different material properties (ambient, diffuse or specular).

I updated GeeXLab with the support of two sided lighting and I coded a simple demo that renders four times a cylinder (641’601 vertices and 1’280’000 faces) for a total of 2’566’404 vertices and 5’120’000 faces. There is one light (GL_LIGHT0) and of course there is no shader. Only old OpenGL fixed pipeline is used to render the scene.

And here are the results. I added a Quadro K4000 (Kepler) just for fun…

– Resolution: 1280×720

1072 FPS – Quadro P5000

188 FPS – Quadro K4000

184 FPS – GTX 1080

– Resolution: 3840×2160

650 FPS – Quadro P5000

115 FPS – Quadro K4000

30 FPS – GTX 1080

Ouch! For the low resolution (1280×720) the P5000 is around 7 times faster and for 4k resolution, the P5000 is around 20 times faster than the GTX 1080! Why??? If GPUs are the same for both cards, are there some functions disabled the GeForce version of the GP104? Or is it only a story of drivers? The Quadro driver has optimized render path for two sided lighting? According to all I read on the web, the GPU is the same and it’s just a story of very optimized drivers for the Quadro. It’s a shocking optimization! Even the old Kepler-based Quadro K4000 is faster than the Pascal-based GTX 1080…

If you want to play with this demo, you need the latest GeeXLab 0.15.0.1+ and the double sided lighting demo available in the code sample pack in the gl-21/two-sided-lighthing/ folder.

5 – Burn-in Test

Just quick (5min) burn-in test with FurMark 1.19. At idle, the testbed draws around 50W. Under FurMark, the testbed draws 250W. With a PSU efficiency factor of 0.9 we get: (250-50) x 0.9 = 180W. We can remove 10W for the CPU and we get a rough approximation of 170W for the P5000. At idle, the GPU temperature of the P5000 is 33°C. The max temperature during the 5min stress test was 80°C. With a longer stress test, the max GPU temperature would have reached 81 or 82°C.

6 – Conclusion

In this test I only covered the graphics performances (OpenGL, OpenCL) of the Quadro P5000 compared to the GeForce GTX 1080. The GeForce vs Quadro performances is a question I often saw on the web. The goal of this article isn’t to tell you to pick up a GeForce in place of a Quadro, the goal is a simple GPU battle. If you need features such as Quadro Sync, Quadro MOSAIC or ECC memory, or if the CAD software you work with, requires a Quadro accelerator, you have to buy a Quadro.

After this test here is what I can say: with normal and modern OpenGL or OpenCL applications, there is no real difference in performances between both graphics cards. Of course in applications that need huge amount of graphics memory (greater than 8GB), the P5000 will shine with its 16GB of GDDR5X memory, but for other modern OpenGL / Direct3D applications, there is no significant difference: for the same clock speeds, performances are more or less the same.

Now for professional applications from ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) like Autodesk, Siemens or Dassault Systemes (Catia), the P5000 offers important gains compared to the GTX 1080. These gains essentially come from optimized graphics drivers (see the two-sided lighting test as an example of a particular optimization) and optimized firmwares.

Thanks to the Internex team for the Quadro P5000 sample!