July 22, 2003, NVIDIA announced its new “professional” graphics card – Quadro FX 3000 based on the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra GPU. There was the usual blowing-out of cheeks and words like “uncompromising”, “universal for pro applications” and even “unique” (although this same product costing thousand dollars differs from its game mate in the drivers only).

We are most interested in two things, though: speed and quality. The image quality depends on the drivers and they haven’t changed since Quadro FX 2000. You can view the screenshots here. This review is dedicated to speed characteristics of the new card. The comparative background is formed by Quadro FX 2000 (based on GeForce 5800 Ultra), FireGL X1 (based on RADEON 9700 PRO) and a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra based gaming card (to show how greatly optimized drivers may affect the performance of a GPU).

Testbed and Methods

Testbed configuration:

• Pentium 4 3.06GHz CPU;
• ASUS P4PE mainboard;
• 1GB DDR SDRAM, CL2;
• Graphics cards: NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000 and 2000, ATI FireGL X1 and NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra;
• 30GB Barracuda ATA V HDD.

Software:

• Windows XP SP1;
• 3ds max 5 (OpenGL rendering), 1280x1024, 32bit;
• Texture size (if not specified): 512x512 background, 256x256 material;
• Drivers for NVIDIA cards: Detonator 44.03 (V-Sync off) + Maxtreme 4.00.29
• Drivers for FireGL X1: version 1021.