The latest graphics cards based on the newest GPU from NVIDIA are undoubtedly of great interest to numerous designers, who have no opportunity to get a professional graphics card.

As we all know, the performance in 3ds Studio MAX is very much dependent on such things as powerful T&L unit, high memory bandwidth and number of texturing units per pipeline together with the number of pipelines. And it is no secret for anyone already that GeForce4 differs from GeForce3 by a twice as powerful T&L unit, improved operation with the memory subsystem and higher chip and memory working frequencies. This way, GeForce4 Ti4600 may be regarded by a user as an overclocked up to 300MHz chip and 650MHz memory frequency GeForce3.

In this review I decided to compare the performance of NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600 based graphics card with that of the accelerators based on previous generation graphics chips from NVIDIA: SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 and ELSA Gloria DCC. The first card is based on a well-known NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500 gaming graphics chip clocked at 240MHz core and 500MHz memory. The second card from ELSA is based on a professional version of GeForce3: NVIDIA Quadro DCC. This product is clocked at lower frequencies, corresponding to those of the classical GeForce3, namely at 200MHz core and 460MHz memory. However, it boasts one indisputable advantage: drivers optimized for 3ds max. Check our article on NVIDIA Quadro DCC and NVIDIA GeForce3 in 3ds max 4 for more details on ELSA Gloria DCC and our SUMA Platinum GeForce3 Ti500 SE Review for more details on SUMA card.

Testbed and Methods

To estimate the performance of our testing competitors I used the same benchmarks as in the last reviews. As you remember, these benchmarks are recommended for testing in 3ds max by the developer of this particular application.

Starting from this review I decided to do no more tests with enabled anti-aliasing, as all the contemporary graphics cards can perform anti-aliasing without any performance losses.

Here is the testbed used:

• Pentium 2.2GHz CPU;
• ABIT TH7II mainboard;
• 1024MB PC800 RDRAM;
• NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600, SUMA GeForce3 Ti500 and ELSA Gloria DCC graphics cards;
• 20GB IBM DTLA 7200rpm HDD.

We used the following software:

• Windows 2000 SP2;
• 3ds max 4.26 (OpenGL rendering), 1024x768 32bit.

For our graphics cards we installed the following drivers:

• GeForce3 and GeForce4: Detonator XP ver. 27.20;
• ELSA Gloria DCC: Detonator XP ver. 27.20 and ELSA Maxtreme ver. 4.0.

Performance

Benchmark 1: 4 Views Rendering Test

The first benchmark is a certain "stress-test". It plays an animated scene in four viewports at the same time. However, the rendering methods set in these viewports are different. The scene in two upper viewports is in "Wireframe" mode, in the lower left viewport - in "Smooth + HighLights" + "Edged Faces", and in lower right viewport - in "Smooth + HighLights":

This scene contains very few polygons, only 28 thousand. However, since the animation was played in all four viewports simultaneously, the resulting fps rate appeared not very high.

• Polygons: 28868
• Light sources: 1
• Mode: Wireframe, Smooth + Highlights

During simultaneous animation in all the four viewports, the CPU is loaded really heavily, so that the difference in the graphics cards performance is eliminated completely. As we see, the driver optimization for 3ds max provided an even greater performance increase than the actual growth of the working frequencies.

Benchmark 2: Blit Test

The second benchmark represents a scene with 7 standard primitives, which make the scene complexity equal to 10 thousand polygons.

There are six static objects in the scene and the seventh one is moving slowly across the entire scene passing through other objects. This benchmark checks if the intersecting objects are displayed correctly and if the graphics card and the driver cope with this task fast enough.

• Polygons: 9712
• Light sources: 1
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights

This benchmark doesn't load the CPU and the GPU at all and shows the speed and "correctness" of the displayed objects crossing one another along the Z-axis in the viewports (this is where the really impressive fps rates come from). In case of incorrect realization of the objects overlapping in the drivers or on the hardware level, this animation speed drops down to 10-20fps. In our case, however, both graphics cards successfully stood the test.

Benchmark 3: Dual Planes Visualization Test

The scene from the third benchmark shows a ball, which is moving very slowly against the background geometry made of 15000 polygons.

The ball doesn't cross any other objects. Since it moves very slowly, then the "perfect" driver will make very few changes to each further frame. In other words, this benchmarks checks if the graphics card is capable of drawing anew only those objects, which got really changed.

• Polygons: 15653
• Light sources: 1
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights

Like the previous benchmark, this one shows that the higher working frequencies do not have any influence on the performance. GeForce4 fails to beat the 1.5 times slower competitor working with optimized drivers.

Benchmark 4: Geometry Visualization Test 1

This benchmark shows if the graphics card is good at processing very complex geometry in Smooth + Highlights mode.

• Polygons: 200270
• Light sources: 1
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights

Again GeForce4 proved as fast as GeForce3 and optimized drivers grant Gloria DCC a simply huge advantage over the competitors.

Benchmark 5: Geometry Visualization Test 2

The fifth benchmark is devoted to testing the graphics cards abilities in terms of processing complex geometry only. This time the amount of polygons nearly doubled and made 376 thousand. The same surface, as in the previous benchmark scene, is now covered with buildings.

This benchmark can easily bring any graphics card to its knees: the average fps rate hardly reaches 3 frames. However, you should bear in mind that this is just a benchmark testing the card's geometric performance. The file was surely created not with the 3fps. Each building was designed in a separate file and when it was added to the entire scene, some part of the geometry was disabled in order to increase the performance.

• Polygons: 376875
• Light sources: 1
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights

The situation in the second geometric benchmark is similar to that in the previous test. A not very high performance growth granted by Maxtreme driver can be explained by too low geometric performance of the system CPU (note that the T&L unit of the graphics cards is not involved in 3ds max).

Benchmark 6: Lighting Visualization Test 1

Having taken a look at the graphics cards performance when working with geometry, we suggest passing over to the imitation of multiple light sources. This test offers 8 SpotLights, which are constantly moving and lighting some kind of asteroid.

We should point out that imitating the effect made by SpotLights is a much more resource-hungry process than the imitation of Omni or Directional lighting.

• Polygons: 39600
• Light sources: 8
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights

This is the first benchmark where higher working frequencies of the GeForce4 start mattering tangibly. The asteroid lighting is loading the GPU in the first place. So, the GPU of the GeForce4 Ti4600 is much faster than the GPUs of the other racers. However, we should also point out that the slower GPU of Gloria DCC nevertheless managed to outperform faster GeForce3 GPU due to optimized drivers.

Benchmark 7: Lighting Visualization Test 2

Here we see the same asteroid, but this time it is lit by 8 Directional lights. Directional lights are slower than Omni lights, but faster than SpotLights.

• Polygons: 39600
• Light sources: 8
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights

Benchmark 8: Lighting Visualization Test 3

One more time we see the same asteroid with the lights coming from 8 different sources. But now these are all Omni lights, the fastest lights in 3D MAX.

• Polygons: 39600
• Light sources: 8
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights

Summing up the results shown by the graphics cards in the Lighting benchmarks we can state that 25% higher frequency of GeForce4 compared with GeForce3 granted a 10% performance increase.

Benchmark 9: Rasterization Visualization Test

The ninth benchmark is a scene with 1 light source and very simple geometry, including only 4500 polygons, which occupies the entire viewport. It is aimed at testing the rasterizing speed in Smooth+ Highlights.

When the camera is moving, the graphics card should rasterize big and small polygons (relative to the screen size).

• Polygons: 4684
• Light sources: 1
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights

Just like in the previous benchmarks, GeForce4 appeared 10% faster than GeForce3, and the optimized drivers of Gloria DCC let the latter catch up with the competitors although its working frequencies are 1.5 times lower.

Benchmark 10: Texture Visualization Test 1

The next benchmark is devoted to work with textures. The file contains a lot of textures and very little geometry (224 polygons). As for the benchmark, it is just a rotating spherical polygon with the facets covered with 48 different textures.

Very little geometry and many textures involved give us a perfect idea of how fast the graphics cards can process these textures.

• Polygons: 224
• Light sources: 1
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights

This is the first benchmark where GeForce4 managed to leave GeForce3 considerably far behind. However, again the professional Gloria DCC ran nearly neck and neck with GeForce4.

Benchmark 11: Texture Visualization Test 2

This is a fully textured room with a camera moving inside. This benchmark is very close to real applications because it has a lot of textures, not very simple geometry and several light sources. It shows what graphics cards are capable of when processing pretty complex scenes in Smooth + Highlights mode.

• Polygons: 12413
• Light sources: 8
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights

Benchmark 12: Texture Visualization Test 3

Animated "waves" with the 114KB texture laid over them show how fast the card can deform very light geometry and modify smaller textures.

• Polygons: 880
• Light sources: 1
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights

The tendency repeats in both texturing benchmarks: the advantage of GeForce4 over GeForce3 makes about 10% and the best results still belong to Gloria DCC thanks to drivers optimized for 3ds max.

Benchmark 13: Wireframe Visualization Test

This benchmark runs with different speeds in the Wireframe mode. 111 thousand polygons in Wireframe mode will be a really tough test for any modern graphics card. Just as in the very first benchmark we enabled Anti-Aliasing here:

• Polygons: 11270
• Light sources: 1
• Mode: Wireframe

All the benchmarks described above are recommended by 3D MAX developers. However, as we have already seen, they are aimed at testing different functions and their implementation separately from one another. Since there are no "general" tests there, we decided to add one more benchmark to this set: a scene with 8 light sources, 61371 polygons and a great lot of transparent surfaces. The file with all textures makes 6MB total size and its complexity is quite typical of the today's 3D projects. We also included some animation to provide more realistic testing conditions: the camera is moving around the room capturing all objects. This is how the first frame looks after the final rendering is done:

We used this scene to test graphics cards in Wireframe mode as well as in Smooth + Highlights mode. As a result, we've got two benchmarks:

Benchmark 14: Complex Wireframe Visualization Test

The scene in Wireframe mode:

• Polygons: 61371
• Light sources: 8
• Mode: Wireframe

Benchmark 15: Complex Shading Visualization Test

The same scene in Smooth + Highlights mode:

• Polygons: 61371
• Light sources: 8
• Mode: Smooth + Highlights

Conclusion

Let's sum up the results in a single table for your convenience:

As we see, the increase in the working chip and memory frequencies doesn't ensure any comparable or even noticeable performance growth in most cases. This gives us every reason to draw a very simple conclusion: NVIDIA GeForce4 is a gaming solution in the first place, so you shouldn't expect it to work wonders in 3ds studio max and to defeat the GeForce3 predecessor.