by FastSite
02/05/2003 | 12:00 AM
Due to a number of successful investigations carried out by our team and our colleagues from Overclockers.ru site, we were lucky to get the opportunity to test the professional R300 based FireGL X1 and FireGL Z1 graphics cards. (see the news story called "Modify the Gaming Cards on ATI Chips into Professional Ones!" for more information). These graphics cards are close relatives of RADEON 9700/Pro and RADEON 9500 and differ from the latter solutions only by the jumper set into the "professional" position and new BIOS. Read more about it here.<%BANNER[article]%>
As you remember, NVIDIA built Quadro/2/3 from their GeForce/2/3 by resetting the appropriate jumper defining the graphics card ID. ATI seems to have chosen the same way in case of its R300 graphics cards. We are first of all interested in the performance of these graphics cards in 3ds max 5 professional software set. X1 differs from Z1 by the use of 8 pipelines instead of 4, which should theoretically tell on the results of texture tests, and at the same time both professional graphics cards differ from the gaming ones by their drivers, which are optimized for professional applications. To make this comparison more exciting, we decided to add the results obtained by the latest NVIDIA graphics solutions: GeForce4 Ti4600 and Quadro 4 900XGL. The results of the latest professional FireGL 8800 solution from ATI are also there.
To perform the tests I decided to use a set of benchmarks recommended by the 3ds max 5 developer company.
Here is our testbed configuration:
We used the following software:
The tests were run with the following settings:
Besides that, the texture filtering parameters by Quadro 4 were set to Nice/Necest, as only in this case the picture quality provided by NVIDIA's solution corresponded to that provided by ATI cards.
This benchmark checks if the graphics card is capable of refreshing more than one viewport in 3ds max simultaneously. There is some animation played in all viewports, and to load the graphics accelerator even more each viewport is displayed in a different mode: from Wireframe to Smooth + Highlights.
Here the graphics cards have to work with animation in a single viewport. During the test the camera is flying above the rocks and hills of the moon surface landscape, which is built by 400 thousand polygons displayed in Smooth + Highlights mode.
This test is none other but the same moon surface picture from the previous benchmark. However, besides the landscape itself, we now have some flying objects, like pace crafts or planes.
This benchmark deal with the processing of multiple light sources. Since most graphics cards do not support more than 8 light sources, this test as well as the next two work with 8 lights of different types. Here we will have 8 SpotLight light sources, which move and light some geometrical object.
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.
Here we have the same object, but this time it is lit by 8 Directional lights. Directional lights in 3ds max 5 are the fastest unlike the previous package version.
Again we've got the same object and 8 light sources. But this time these are all Omni lights, which involve average resources between SpotLight and Directional lights described above.
This scene boasts "easy" geometry and a couple of light sources. It is displayed in a single viewport on the entire screen thus being an excellent test of the rasterizing speed in Smooth + Highlights mode.
This test is intended to show how fast the graphics cards are when it comes to multiple textures processing. The file contains a lot of textures and very little geometry.
This benchmark emulates the work on the game level, as it contains both: sufficient geometry and numerous textures. The animation is arranged in such a way that the entire scene could be displayed completely.
This test reveals the ability of the graphics accelerators to display textures on the deforming geometry.
This test is aimed at showing what the graphics cards are capable of in terms of transparent textures processing.
The new 3ds max 5 features not only the transparency remaining from the previous version, which is imitated by dithering:
But also the 'real" transparency implemented by blending the pixel color of the overlapping objects:
You can shift between the transparency modes in the viewport control panel:
Of course, you can guess that the more correctly implemented transparency will be slower.
Here the camera flies through the rocks and hills of the moon surface landscape built of 400 thousand polygons, i.e. the scene is the same as in Benchmark 2, actually. However, the picture is displayed in the Wireframe mode.
This is the Benchmark 3 scene in wireframe mode:
So, the results obtained show that the "professional" ATI cards appear 4 times faster than the gaming ones in the most important geometric benchmarks, in both: wireframe and smooth + highlights modes. Their advantage is not that tremendous in texturing and lighting tests: they are only 1.5 times faster at the most, however, these tests are optimal for gaming graphics cards, unlike the geometric tests mentioned above. Also we can state that NVIDIA Quadro outpaces the "professional" ATI solutions: in the wireframe mode of geometric benchmarks the NVIDIA professional solution showed the same fourfold advantage.
All in all both NVIDIA graphics cards seem to be more preferable for 3ds max 5 users than ATI solutions. However, you should always keep in mind that you will never be able to transform your GeForce4 Ti4600 into Quadro 4 900XGL: starting from the fourth graphics accelerator family NVIDIA is no longer resorting to "easy" ways of distinguishing between the professional and gaming graphics solution, so that the GeForce4 and Quadro 4 GPUs are pretty different on the hardware level.
Anyway, we suggest that you take note of these results, but we wouldn't push you to make up your mind about the best choice for your 3ds max 5 needs right now. Very soon we will have more interesting stuff coming out, namely, we will see how the real professional graphics cards from ATI perform compared to the "professional" solutions we managed to build ourselves :)