SolidWorks

Another computer-aided design system from Dassault Systemes, SolidWorks is a direct rival to Pro/ENGINEER. The sw-02 scenario simulates the operation of SolidWorks 2004 using two models: a car engine and a sports car.

The ATI Radeon X1950 XTX wins here like it has done in a number of earlier professional tests, notwithstanding Nvidia’s vast experience in developing professional graphics cards. Alas, the Radeon HD 2900 XT has nothing to boast about. Outperforming the GeForce 8800 GTS is the best it can do here.

UGS Teamcenter Visualization Mockup

Imitating the VisMockup visualization system, this test renders a complex model of a car with different shading modes containing from 5 to 11 million vertexes. This is one of the most resource-consuming tests in SPECViewperf 9.

And again the Radeon HD 2900 XT finds itself in last place while its predecessor Radeon X1950 XTX takes top position, considerably outperforming the GeForce 8800 GTX. Unfortunately, the overall performance level is as low as 2-4fps. It won’t be comfortable to work under such conditions.

UGS NX 3

NX 3 is a universal computer-aided design and development tool combining all stages of the development process: computer-aided design, computer-aided engineering, and computer-aided manufacturing. This SPECViewperf scenario contains a number of models of varying degree of complexity, up to 30 million vertexes with shading and lighting. This is going to be a hard trial for the graphics subsystem.

Having a well-balanced architecture that can only be let down by driver-related flaws, the GeForce 8800 GTX takes the lead here. It is followed by the GeForce 8800 GTS and Radeon X1950 XTX. The Radeon HD 2900 XT is lagging behind once again. This is indeed an ordeal of a test as you can judge by the extremely low performance of our gaming graphics cards.

Summing up the results of the professional tests we can come to only one conclusion which may sound disappointing for people who’d want to save money by using a gaming graphics card in professional applications. Gaming cards cannot deliver acceptable performance in 3D modeling, visualization, CAD/CAM and other professional programs because their drivers are written with other applications in mind and do not contain the optimizations that help professional graphics cards, based on the same GPUs, deliver much high performance under the same conditions. You can have some 25fps at best, but most often the speed of your gaming card is going to vary from 3 to 15fps. Not a comfortable speed at all.

Anyway, if you cannot afford a professional graphics card, the best choice among the gaming cards included into this review is Radeon X1950 XTX. It has won most of the SPECViewperf tests. The Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX is second best, being a preferable solution for Maya and 3ds max.