Performance: Testing in 4 Viewports

Test Session 1

All the previous benchmarks (except Benchmark 1) showed the graphics cards performance when working in a single viewport. However, most designers spend a lot of time working with 4 or 3 viewports at the same time. Therefore, I decided to pay special attention to the performance of our testing participants when there is more then one viewport. To test I selected two scenes, which you should be very familiar with, if you have read other articles about 3ds max on our site.

This is the famous raterization test:

• Polygons: 4684
• Light sources: 1

Now you see the same scene in Smooth + Highlights mode:

I decided to repeat the results of this benchmark here once again just for your convenience: you should have already seem them above in the Benchmark 7 section. I suggest that you compare the results shown by graphics cards in single-viewport mode with their performance in case of multiple viewports involved. Here come the tests:

This is the same benchmark but there is only one active viewport out of four: the lower right one. Here we will see is our guinea pigs can perform the rendering in smaller viewports faster.

As we see, the performance grew up quite significantly, as we moved to a smaller viewport.

Here we have the same scene as in the previous case (see the screenshot above) but this time all the four viewports are active. In the three viewports except the lower right one the scene is in Wireframe mode, and only the camera displaying the scene in the lower right corner is moving in these viewports.

Here the results shown by our testing participants are almost equal.

The scene is displayed in all the four viewports. In the three of them the - in Smooth + Highlights mode, and in the fourth - in Wireframe mode.

Look, the mode viewports are involved and the higher is the workload, the better is the performance of ATI FireGL 8800 compared with NVIDIA Quadro4 cards. In Benchmark 1.1 when we had only one viewport, it fell behind Quadro4 solutions, while in case of 4 viewports and maximum workload (i.e. animation), it is wining the race.

Test Session 2

The next benchmark measures the performance in Wireframe mode. 111 thousand polygons in Wireframe mode will become a really tough test for any graphics card.

• Polygons: 111270
• Light sources: 1
• Mode: Wireframe

This is the scene in a single viewport tested:

FireGL is leading in geometrical benchmarks, especially in Wireframe mode with a huge advantage. Let's see what happens if the animation is displayed in all the four viewports.

The performance ratio remained the same: 1:2 in favour of FireGL 8800.

So summing up the results in case of multiple viewports, we can say that ATI FireGL 8800 is an indisputable leader.

Performance: Testing with Complex Scenes

If you have read my previous articles you should remember, that besides the benchmarks recommended by 3ds max developers, I usually investigated the performance of the solutions tested in "real" scenes. This time, the number of complex benchmarks of the kind has become bigger.

Benchmark 1

Scene in Smooth + Highlights mode


Scene in Wireframe mode

• Polygons: 53716
• Light sources: 2

The animation is arranged in such a way that the camera is constantly moving from the foreground to the background.

The performance of Quadro4 900XGL and FireGL 8800 in Wireframe mode is nearly equal, and in Smooth + Highlights mode NVIDIA solution proves 20% faster.

It is also very interesting that unlike the results obtained in synthetic benchmarks described above, NVIDIA's professional graphics cards outperform the gaming ones much greater here.

Benchmark 2

Scene in Smooth + Highlights mode


Scene in Wireframe mode

• Polygons: 61371
• Light sources: 8

The animation is arranged in such a way that the camera is moving around the room capturing all objects of the scene.

The situation here is similar to that described in the previous benchmark, however, in this case the performance gap is even higher: Quadro4 900XGL performs best of all in Wireframe, and in Smooth + Highlights mode its advantage over the rivals makes 50%! The performance gap between professional and gaming graphics solutions from NVIDIA in this benchmark is also higher than in the previous one: the difference in Wireframe mode is triple.

Benchmark 3

Scene in Smooth + Highlights mode


Scene in Wireframe mode

• Polygons: 488577
• Light sources: 3

The scene with a great amount of polygons will be a perfect test of the cards geometrical abilities. The animation is arranged in such a way that the camera is turning inside this "lab" and even goes beyond the "walls".

Again FireGL 8800 proves its indisputable leadership in scenes with massive geometry.

Benchmark 4

Scene in Smooth + Highlights mode


Scene in Wireframe mode

• Polygons: 488577
• Light sources: 3

And in conclusion I suggest taking a closer look at one very interesting scene.

This benchmark allows evaluating the graphics cards performance, and to be more precise the driver optimization, when there is only one rotating model in the scene. In all the four viewports there is only one animated object: the fan (marked with a red rectangle):

This benchmark tests the drivers, and not the hardware, since as we see, the results shown by Quadro DCC, GeForce4 Ti4600 and Quadro4 cards are similar, though these solutions work at different clock frequencies. Also we notice that ATI FireGL8800 is almost 50% faster than Quadro4 based graphics cards, which is an excellent result for a scene with small geometry. NVIDIA software developers seem to have simply left out the case when there is only one small moving object in the entire scene.

Conclusion

As the tests showed, we can't say which solution, ATI FireGL 8800 or NVIDIA Quadro4, is better and which is worse. The graphics cards perform differently in different scenes and it makes them fit into different segments of the professional graphics market.

In the scenes with complex geometry in Wireframe mode, ATI graphics card is an indisputable leader. Also FireGL 8800 proved much faster when working with several viewports rather than with a single viewport opened to the maximum, and in this case FireGL 8800 is faster in both modes: Wireframe and Smooth + Highlights. These features make ATI FireGL 8800 a perfect choice for model-makers, for instance.

The advantage of Quadro4 900XGL shows its best in Smooth + Highlights mode in case of a single viewport. NVIDIA solutions are beyond any competition especially when working with the miniatures of large textures, which makes it the best buy for animation needs and texturing of the ready surfaces.

However, professional graphics cards comparison is the comparison of their driver optimization in the first place and finding out where the driver optimization appeared incomplete.

In general, we could say that although the drivers of all the professional graphics cards tested do provide a certain performance increase compared with the results shown by gaming solutions, they still need to be optimized and worked on more. As we saw, Maxtreme driver doesn't single out the changing object of the scene and redraws the entire scene. Moreover, this driver works perfectly in a single viewport (so that Quadro4 900XGL outpaced FireGL 8800 in most cases). However, as it comes to animation, even to the simplest one, such as moving the camera, it slows down the performance of the card in four viewports so greatly, that FireGL 8800 leaves it very far behind.

As for ATI drivers, things are also not that impeccable here. The freshest drivers, which we received together with the card allowed it to show excellent results when processing multiple viewports, complex geometry and wireframe modes. However, the Smooth + Highlights mode appeared a stumbling stone for ATI FireGL 8800. Moreover, FireGL 8800 appeared 1.5-2 times slower than Quadro4 900XGL when working with textures and lights.

Anyway, despite all the mentioned drawbacks and bottlenecks, we have every right to state that "professional" graphics cards from ATI and NVIDIA ensure good fps rate even in very "heavy" scenes and grant an over three times higher performance than the current gaming solutions show.