A considerable while ago :) in one of our first 3DMAX reviews we mentioned that the professional Diamond Fire GL 1000 Pro, which used to be one of the most widely spread cards at that time yielded in performance to gaming solutions based on NVIDIA Riva TNT in the professional 3D Studio MAX application.

Some time later, we managed to prove once again that professional graphics cards 3Dlabs Oxygen based on the specially designed graphics processors, which cost thousands of dollars at that time, were completely defeated not only by a gaming solution built on then newest GeForce3 chip but even by GeForce2 MX.

It appeared possible because the gaming graphics cards generations change much faster than professional solutions generations and as a result their power grows much quicker. This way it is clear that the graphics cards built on the top NVIDIA gaming solutions have never lost any battle to any professional solutions based on chips designed specifically for 3D modeling applications. And these results were achieved with the drivers optimized for games, i.e. for rendering in a single window in full-screen mode, for scenes with few polygons and large textures compared with the miniatures in the 3ds max viewports. But could you only imagine what advantages will we get once the gaming graphics cards start working with the drivers optimized for multi-window interface, scenes with few textures and "multiple" geometry? You will agree that it is much easier to rewrite some driver modules rather than design graphics cards for professional need anew.

So, the described above approach resulted into "pseudo-professional" cards born gaming and based on gaming chips but then provided with modified drivers. The manufacturers call these graphics cards professional and position them as solutions for professional graphics accelerators market (selling for an appropriate price, of course). However, for the reasons described above I am using inverted commas on the word "professional" on purpose. In order to prevent the users from installing "professional" drivers for their gaming graphics cards the manufacturers introduce some minor changes to the cards electronic layout.

By the way, referring back to a bit of history, I would like to say that the idea of "modifying" the cards of one market segment into the solutions for another market segment doesn't belong to NVIDIA, as you might have thought. In the times of TNT2 based solutions, 3Dlabs Company known for its Oxygen card family released a solution for web-designers called Permedia 3 "Create!" based on the similarly called graphics chip and a "professional" Oxygen VX completely identical to Permedia 3. I have already mentioned in some of our reviews that the only difference between the cards was the drivers…

So, the idea of changing the drivers and ChipID of the GeForce256, so that to turn these gaming solutions into "professional" Quadro, aroused a lot of enthusiasm. The same thing happened to GeForce2 family: Quadro2 Pro was obtained from GeForce2 Pro. However, unlike the gaming GeForce2 Pro, "professional" Quadro2 Pro worked at 50MHz higher chip frequency, which allowed it to outperform the gaming GeForce2 Pro in 3DMAX. NVIDIA marketing people then turned GeForce3 into Quadro DCC, though the working frequencies remained unchanged this time, because of the poor overclocking potential of GeForce3. And now they created a new Quadro4 XGL family from the GeForce4 Ti solutions.

Following in the footsteps of NVIDIA, which has been making "professional" graphics cards based on gaming chips for a long time already, ATI introduced their own solution of the kind: a new "professional solution for mainstream workstations". It is Fire GL 8800 based on the modified gaming RADEON 8500, though it works at 30MHz/300MHz chip and memory frequencies (while RADEON 8500 works at 275MHz/275MHz respectively) and is equipped with 128MB DDR SDRAM (64MB by RADEON 8500).

In this review we will compare the performance of these two "professional" solutions built on the modifications on ATI RADEON 8500 and NVIDIA GeForce4 chips. Also we will include the results for their gaming brothers, RADEON 8500 and GeForce4 Ti 4600, as well as the previous generation Quadro DCC in our tests.

Testing Participants

ATI Fire GL 8800

   

The special drivers for this card feature the following configuration page:

The card works at 300MHz chip and 600MHz (300MHz DDR) memory frequencies.

NVIDIA Quadro4 900XGL

   

Quadro4 900XGL is equipped with 2 DVI-Outs and works at 300MHz core and 650MHz memory frequencies.

NVIDIA Quadro4 750XGL

   

Quadr?4 700XGL differs from its elder sister by lower working frequencies - 275MHz chip and 550MHz memory, and is equipped with a D-SUB Out and a DVI-Out.

The special MAXTREME drivers, which we have already introduced to you in our previous reviews, feature the following driver configuration page:

We had Quadro4 cards just as NVIDIA samples, and not ELSA retail products with some package (and the latest MAXTREME driver we received in the very last moment). FireGL from ATI though arrived in a colorful package still had the DC with the drivers stuck on the outside of the box, and of course, there was nothing but drivers on that CD. So, I decided to pay special attention to the package contents, special software and the functions of the driver configuration pages in separate reviews devoted to ATI FireGL 8800 and NVIDIA Quadro4 XGL and Quadro4 NVS families. I think it makes sense.

Image Quality Evaluation Methods

All graphics cards displayed all the benchmark scenes absolutely correctly, which not surprising at all, as Smooth + Highlight modes are undemanding to the driver quality and any graphics accelerator from TVT-GeForce series or RADEON256-RADEON 8500 series can easily work with 3ds max correctly. Of course, this is the merit of software developers who created the corresponding 3ds max modules, because some other programs, such as Maya, Lightwave are much more demanding to the driver quality. However, if you have read all the previous articles about 3ds max, you should remember that all of them prove this point: even in 3DMAX 2.5 we could see such exotic graphics solutions as Matrox 400 and ATI Rage128 work properly.

The only differences in image quality provided by different cards can be noticed in Wireframe mode with Anti-Aliasing enabled: different drivers have different Anti-Aliasing implementation, so that the anti-aliased lines are of different thickness. Of course, the thinner is the anti-aliased line, the better, as thicker lines overlay other objects reducing the resolution this way. The screenshots below illustrate my point: the selected fragments show the most noticeable reduction of the resolution caused by the anti-aliased lines:

      
No Anti-Aliasing




      
Anti-Aliasing performed by Detonator drivers

All Detonator drivers have the same anti-aliasing algorithm implemented. As you can see, the lines have become much thicker than in the non-AA mode.

      
Anti-Aliasing performed by RADEON 8500 drivers

The lines in this case as almost as thick as in case of Detonator drivers.

      
Anti-Aliasing performed by Maxtreme drivers

Wow, excellent results! The lines are really thin. Maxtreme drivers tested here are used for all Quadro cards and will work with both: Quadro4 XGL and Quadro DCC.

      
Anti-Aliasing performed by FireGL 8800 drivers

Here we have to admit that the anti-aliasing quality is the worst of all. The lines are so thick that you will be simply unable to work with complex geometry with anti-aliasing enabled.

So, we found out that the best image quality in Wireframe mode with Anti-Aliasing enabled is provided by Maxtreme drivers for NVIDIA Quadro4 family.

However, we wouldn't consider it a very big advantage of Quadro4 cards over FireGL cards on ATI chips, as far not all 3ds max 4 users prefer Wireframe modes. Most designers do not ever enable Anti-Aliasing, as any Anti-Aliasing, even the best one will inevitable worsen the resolution.