We have devoted quite a lot of time to testing graphics accelerators of all kinds in gaming applications. However, games are far not the only field where the today's graphics cards can show their best. The more powerful get the CPUs and graphics processors, the more efficient can be a PC used for 3D graphics development and processing. There are quite many well-known programs dealing with 3D modeling, however, one of the most widely spread applications appears 3D Studio MAX. This is one of the reasons why we decided to write an article where we consider the performance of all the today's graphics cards in this application. For our tests we took the following accelerators: Creative 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 (GeForce2 GTS), SUMA Platinum GeForce2 MX, ATI RADEON VIVO, Matrox Millennium G450 and 3dfx Voodoo5 5500. Although this article may seem pretty specific, it is aimed not only at those of you who are experienced in working with 3D Studio MAX, but at a much broader audience. Particularly for those guys who are just considering the possibility of doing some 3D design on their PCs, we included the basics of 3DMAX, which will be also very helpful for proper understanding of the obtained results. Therefore, we would strongly recommend reading the info that precedes the benchmarks area, since there you may find answers to many questions, which may turn up after checking the diagrams.

3DMAX Basic Principles

Using a 3D modeling software is very similar to filming with a video camera a certain area full of objects you created. Every project created in 3D modeling applications and in 3DMAX in particular, usually starts with building the basic geometry and introducing all the necessary modifications to it. All the work connected with the objects creation, positioning and modifying is basically carried out in the so called Viewports:

3DMAX allows modeling almost everything you wish by means of such basic objects as cubes, spheres, cylinders and cones and their modifications:

For example, the geometry of a photo camera consists only of modified basic objects:

As soon as the basic objects are created and placed accordingly, the "materials" can be applied to them, i.e. the textures can be laid over the geometry. As you may notice the textures shown in viewports are quite schematic. In fact, the displayed image quality here was optimized in order to speed up the whole thing:

Actually, the textures in 3DMAX viewports aren't completely loaded to the graphics memory, but are displayed as miniatures with adjustable size from 128x128 up to 1024x1024 pixels.

And only after the scene is completely designed, the CPU visualizes it by final software rendering. Note that in this case the image quality of the final software rendering is much higher and more precise than that the graphics card provides in viewports. And the explanation is quite simple: none of the today's graphics accelerators supports as many visual effects as necessary retaining the high fps rate at the same time. Therefore, we have to put up with very slow but very efficient software rendering. Of course, the fps rate when rendering the finalized image is very small, some frames of complex scenes may be rendered for hours. However, in this case the fastness is not the most important thing to hunt for, unlike the work in viewports, for instance. During the final rendering of the scene image quality is much more important. Especially since you needn't control this process and can leave your PC rendering the modeled final project during the night time, for example.

Definitely, you should understand very well that you work on your 3D project in the viewports and the fps rate provided by the graphics card determines if you will feel comfortable when working or not and doesn't tell on the results of the final rendering, carried out by the CPU after the scene construction is completely over.

3DMAX and 3D Games: Different Performance Requirements

When working in 3DMAX, we expect our graphics card to process complex geometry quickly enough, since the amount of polygons in a project of medium complexity is exponentially higher than that in a medium Quake3 gaming level.

Hundreds Thousands of Polygons in a Single Scene

In other words, when the scene is displayed in the viewports, the unit responsible for geometry processing bears the major workload and it is this particular unit as well as the CPU, which determine the graphics card fastness. As we have already mentioned above, all the textures, lighting and effects are applied by the CPU only after the project is finished that is why we won't consider this stage in our current article.

In games the computing capacity of the graphics accelerator is involved in processing larger textures and applying various effects to these textures. As for the amount of polygons in the today's games, they aren't that numerous at all. That is why the number of rendering pipelines and texturing units matters so greatly for games.

So, all this means that in 3DMAX the graphics card is loaded in an absolutely different way as in games. In other words, in games the stress in made on the image quality while in 3DMAX - on how fast the viewports are refreshed.

Various Rendering Methods in 3DMAX Viewports

On the one hand, 3DMAX requires extremely fast processing of complex geometry in viewports. But on the other hand, when the project is nearly finished the designer can't overcome the temptation to take a look at the entire thing not only in the wireframe mode, but with all the textures and lighting applied, which may drop down the fps rate significantly. That is why in order to allow balancing between the quality and performance, the developers of 3DMAX application included several rendering methods for viewports. Since this article is devoted to 3DMAX, we decided to mention only the basic viewports rendering methods starting from the one providing the lowest quality and finishing with the one offering the best image quality. Getting a good idea of the major principles of these rendering methods will be very helpful for proper understanding of further tests.

Bounding Box

This is the fastest method but at the same time it provides the smallest level of detail and hence the lowest image quality.

In fact, it would be incorrect to speak about any image quality here, because all the objects are represented only as rectangles of the corresponding size. This method will be suitable only for viewing very large scenes if the graphics card in your system is too slow. Of course, you won't be able to edit the objects in this case.

Wireframe

The wireframe method allows displaying all objects as wire-models with only ribs of the polygons seen.

This method is very often used for geometry modification since it allows you to see all the "insights" and "reverse sides" of the objects.

Facets

With this method used only polygons are displayed in the viewports.

This method is a sort of an intermediate stage between Wireframe and Smooth and offers a certain compromise of performance and quality.

Smooth + Highlights

This method allows not only removing sharp edges of the objects displayed but also applying lighting.

This method is very often used for texturing and further editing of the laid textures.

Note that 3DMAX allows setting different rendering methods for different viewports simultaneously.

In order to illustrate the grave difference between the best rendering quality provided by the graphics card from the final rendering provided by the CPU we would like to offer you a final screenshot of the scene considered above:

This is very good example proving once again that the image quality in viewports is sacrificed for the sake of fast operation.

Anti-Aliasing

In Wireframe mode 3DMAX allows using anti-aliasing. This feature can be activated only in case your graphics card runs with an OpenGL driver. Enabling Anti-Aliasing inevitably leads to the lines getting somewhat thicker, which makes the impression of lower resolution set.

Without Anti-Aliasing


With Anti-Aliasing

As we saw, with all other rendering methods used the image quality in viewports provided by different graphics cards was almost identical. However, when rendering with the enabled anti-aliasing the image quality in systems with different graphics cards varied quite significantly.

Matrox G400


NVIDIA GeForce2


3dfx Voodoo5


ATI RADEON

As you can see yourself, anti-aliasing on Voodoo5 makes it impossible to work with the objects because the lines become incredibly thick. Thicker lines overlay one another making the viewport in wireframe mode a total mess. Therefore, we didn't test Voodoo5 with anti-aliasing enabled.

3DMAX offers no full-scene anti-aliasing, because no matter what graphics card you have, the performance will drop too greatly, which is unacceptable for efficient work in viewports as we have already said. Even the "Enable FSAA" option in Voodoo5 and GeForce drivers doesn't have any effect on the 3DMAX viewports.

3DMAX and Quake3: Different FPS Rates

Dear guys, please don't be shocked to see the 5-10 fps values obtained in some benchmarks. 3DMAX doesn't have the "deathmatch" mode and the work in 3D modeling applications is totally different from playing 3D games. The designer doesn't need to be as quick and accurate as a quaker, because the modeled objects won't run away. However, the major difference between the "fps in 3DMAX" and "fps in Quake3" is the fact that the 3D games hero is usually moving with some constant speed while the objects of 3D scene in 3DMAX move as fast as the designer wants them to. In other words, Quake3 is a real-time game, while the speed of objects in 3DMAX viewports is set by the designer. Therefore, in case the graphics card lacks computing capacity, the gamer will have to put up with some frames falling out while the 3DMAX designer will be able to adjust the objects speed so that to get some acceptable fps rate. The inverse relation between the fps and the moving speed can be clearly seen in the following case. Set the resolution and the level of detail in Quake3 to the maximum and run. And then walk along the same way. You will notice that in the second case there are much fewer missed frames than in the first one. And if the games usually offer two different moving speeds, such as walking and running, then the 3D modeling applications allow changing the speed of the moving objects in much greater intervals. Moreover, in order to increase the performance in 3DMAX you can disable all the objects, which aren't used at the moment, i.e. you can select only those objects, which you need to be displayed in the viewports at a certain moment of time.

So, if you see that some graphics cards showed the result of 5fps, it doesn't at all mean that normal work is no longer possible. It simply shows that the work is slowed down. In fact, you can work in 3DMAX even with the fps rate at 0.5, however, in this case everything will be so awfully slow that you'd better forget about efficiency. The ideal fps rate is just the same as in most games, namely 50-100, however, it can be obtained only for very simple scenes.

The Performance of Professional and Gaming Graphics Cards

The today's graphics market offers two types of graphics accelerators: the so called gaming and professional ones. According to a widely spread opinion, professional graphics cards are absolutely useless for gaming needs and very efficient for all sorts of 3D modeling applications, while the gaming cards can suit only for playing games. We would like to stress right away that in this article we do not intend to argue about the abilities of professional graphics accelerators in other 3D modeling applications. We would only like to disagree with the general statement about professional graphics cards being much more powerful than the gaming ones or being a must for those who want to work in 3DMAX.

A few months ago we got hold of a 700-dollar Oxygen GVX1, which turned out slower in 3DMAX than NVIDIA GeForce256, despite an external geometric coprocessor (and the corresponding support in the drivers). It is exactly because of the lower performance compared to the gaming accelerators that we didn't include any professional graphics cards in our today's tests.

We would also advise you to check out the graphics cards tests carried out by the 3DMAX developer company here.