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- Radeon Pro GPUs outperform Nvidia’s top cards in critical SOLIDWORKS workloads
- Midrange Radeon Pro GPUs match high-end Nvidia Blackwell performance in Inventor
- AMD’s AI Pro R9700 leads Nvidia in drawing and hidden line benchmarks
Professional GPU benchmarking for engineering workloads continues to expose a gap between hardware marketing claims and measurable software behavior.
Recent tests by PugetSystems across common CAD, modeling, and photogrammetry applications show that performance outcomes are often constrained by application design, driver behavior, and limited scaling rather than raw graphics capability.
In several cases, lower-cost prof…
Image Credit: TechRadar
- Radeon Pro GPUs outperform Nvidia’s top cards in critical SOLIDWORKS workloads
- Midrange Radeon Pro GPUs match high-end Nvidia Blackwell performance in Inventor
- AMD’s AI Pro R9700 leads Nvidia in drawing and hidden line benchmarks
Professional GPU benchmarking for engineering workloads continues to expose a gap between hardware marketing claims and measurable software behavior.
Recent tests by PugetSystems across common CAD, modeling, and photogrammetry applications show that performance outcomes are often constrained by application design, driver behavior, and limited scaling rather than raw graphics capability.
In several cases, lower-cost professional GPUs matched or exceeded the results of far more expensive models.
Cheaper Radeon Pro GPUs edge past Blackwell and Ada chips
The tests compared AMD Radeon Pro workstation GPUs directly against Nvidia’s top-tier RTX Pro Blackwell and Ada Generation cards across multiple engineering applications.
Testing focused on Autodesk Inventor, SOLIDWORKS, Revit, and PIX4Dmatic, using consistent 4K display settings and a high-end Ryzen CPU to minimize processor bottlenecks.
In Autodesk Inventor graphics testing, Radeon Pro models such as the W7900, W7800, and AI Pro R9700 performed on par with Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell and RTX 6000 Ada cards once the workload passed a basic performance threshold.
Above the Radeon Pro W7500 level, performance differences between GPUs clustered tightly, indicating minimal scaling regardless of price tier.
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This behavior suggests that Inventor graphics workloads do not gain meaningful benefits from Nvidia’s most expensive workstation GPU designs.
SOLIDWORKS testing showed greater variation between Radeon Pro and Nvidia RTX Pro GPUs, depending on the workload.
Composite GPU scores placed the Radeon Pro W7900 and Radeon AI Pro R9700 ahead of Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell and RTX Pro 5000 models, despite much lower launch prices.
Radeon Pro GPUs also led drawing and hidden line workloads, where every tested AMD card exceeded Nvidia’s fastest result by a wide margin.
However, Nvidia maintained advantages in some shaded and RealView modes, particularly with higher-tier Blackwell cards.
PIX4Dmatic benchmarks supported only Nvidia GPUs, excluding Radeon Pro cards entirely.
Even so, the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell and RTX Pro 5000 delivered only modest gains over earlier Ada cards in calibration and point cloud generation.
Processing time was often shaped by non-GPU stages, which limited the impact of Nvidia’s newest workstation hardware despite exclusive software support.
Across the tested engineering applications, Radeon Pro workstation GPUs repeatedly matched or exceeded Nvidia’s flagship RTX Pro Blackwell cards in GPU-bound workloads while costing far less.
Nvidia’s top models showed strong consistency and software compatibility but rarely delivered performance gains that aligned with their higher prices.
These results suggest that for many engineering workflows, especially CAD drawing and modeling tasks, Radeon Pro hardware currently offers comparable results without the cost premium of high-end workstation GPUs.
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Efosa has been writing about technology for over 7 years, initially driven by curiosity but now fueled by a strong passion for the field. He holds both a Master’s and a PhD in sciences, which provided him with a solid foundation in analytical thinking.
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