ATI Fire GL V5250 -- A "business" video card?

[gdillon]

Hey all,

I'm researching the purchase of a new laptop and have been constantly frustrated by finding great sounding laptops lacking in the graphics department. I'm particularly fond of the ThinkPad line up and just recently realized that the ATI Fire GL V5250 card featured in the T60p is actually a damn good card, comparable to X1600 or X1700, but with an emphasis on "business graphics" applications, such as Maya.

My question: does that mean that this card isn't very good for the casual user? Will it not handle games in a similar way to the X16/1700? Anybody have any idea about what sort of 3DMark scores a notebook set up with a T7200 Merom and this V5250 card might get?

I plan on using the laptop to do advanced Photoshop work (non-3D), but also might add some video editing (non-HD). Also, since I've been stuck back in the early 2000's for so long, it might be nice to play a game every once in a while with the new rig.

Thanks super much. Hope you're well,

~g

 

[Matthias99]

Quadro/FireGL cards generally perform rather poorly in games. The drivers/BIOS are optimized for running OpenGL, and usually around scenes with tons and tons of geometry rather than the crazy amounts of multitexturing, transparency, and pixel/vertex shaders used in most games these days. Likewise, "gaming" cards tend to be lacking at "professional" 3D applications. Although it varies widely based on the application and card you are talking about, and newer gaming cards have a lot of raw horsepower to begin with, so they are often competitive with "professional" cards from a generation or so back.

Basically, I wouldn't expect stunning performance from a FireGL card in games.

I plan on using the laptop to do advanced Photoshop work (non-3D), but also might add some video editing (non-HD).

Just FYI, neither of these tax your video card's 3D capabilities (unless you have a video editing package that is DX9-accelerated for doing special effects). Crappy onboard video will work fine for these.

 

[40sTheme]

FireGL and Quadro are entirely, impossibly pointless for gaming.

 

[Lord Banshee]

If you are not going to use pro 3d application no need to spend more money on the firegl. That firegl is basicly a mobile x1600/x1700. But stick with the gamer card as it will be cheaper.

But off topic sort-of, I will always disagree with anyone that says FireGL/Quadro run poor for games.. I have never experience this on many different quadros and a couple of FireGLs. I believe when people that it is a driver issue or setting in the display settings which they game they are playing has conflicts with. FireGL/Quadro should only be no more than 5-10% worse in games GPU for GPU, Memory for Memory, not price for price as that is a different story. Not putting down Marrhias99 observation just wanted to point out my own.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

I do not know the situation on ATI's production graphics cards, nor would I claim expertise on what I am about to relate, but in many cases, the nVidia Quadro reportedly shares the exact same GPU silicon with the 3D gaming cards, with the drivers as the primary distinction between them. According to several sources I've run across in a couple of game-oriented forums, the particular Quadros that do have the same GPUs can "become" their counterpart mostly by swapping drivers. If the cards' BIOS also must be flashed, that was never mentioned, so I would think a judicious search on Google ought to backtrack some of the material I've run across and remembered bits from.

 

[gdillon]

This all makes sense, I appreciate the comments. I figure the FireGL is probably not as good for gaming, but it can't be all that much worse.

I'm really comparing two machines, the one has the FireGL at 256MB and the other has a x1400 with 128MB dedicated and 128 shared. I imagine that the FireGL would be the more powerful across the board in this comparison, right?

Thanks!

~g

 

[Cadavg]

I recently purchased a Thinkpad T60p which has a firegl V5250. I got the 'p' instead of the regular T60 because the GPU's architecture is very similar to the X1700 which should be a large improvement over the X1400. After a clean install I ran 3DMark06 to see how it would stack up with my PC and my buddy's XPS laptop and I was surprised how low the score came out. Here are the scores:

PC -> 3770 (Pentium D 3.00GHz, NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT, 2 GB Ram)
XPS -> 3576 (Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz, NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS, 2 GB Ram)
T60p -> 1681 (Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz, ATI Mobility FireGL V5250, 2 GB Ram)

After getting these results I tried to upgrade the driver to the newest version from ATI's website and was given an error message saying that the proper hardware could not be found. I called Lenovo to find out why I couldn't upgrade the driver using the one found on ATI's website and they said that they modified the microcode on the GPU so it could not be updated with ATI's driver. This could possibly have had an effect on the benchmark.

Something worth mentioning is that the graphics card reported on the 3DMark06 result is a "Generic VGA 432 MHz / 319 MHz." This could be a result of the proprietary Lenovo driver (I am positive it was installed correctly). I also updated the Bios and Intel chipset to the most recent version and tried the benchmark again with a score of 1682.

Currently I am quite disappointed and plan on returning the computer unless I can find another solution. I will post here if I figure anything out.

 

[gdillon]

Man, that's bad news. I have heard of people using modded drivers on the FireGL to make it more like an X1600. Might be an avenue for exploration.

I just purchased the T60p, too. Looks like I'll be in the same boat as you, soon enough.

~g