Best Card for 2D games?

[MadAd]

Im familiar with 3d cards, benchmarking and modes etc, Im a long term FPS player and have an aging sli system (below).

Im finding myself playing a 2d based application/world a lot more and realised I know absolutely nothing about NV or ATIs 2d performance these days, infact I dont even know how id benchmark this thing in 2d mode (not that i want to, but it has no timedemo and fps is capped at the server anyway).

So, since the 2d part seems to be similar in some generations of card im thinking an upgrade path might not involve buying the biggest 3d engine out there. I saw recently one of the roadmaps talking about improving the 2d but im buying a card already existing, maybe not even an 8800 if i dont have to, however i want it to run a lot of windows and not have it fall over just because im driving it a bit.

Who/where/what would i be looking at to get benchmarking/performance info on 2d capabilities of these things? Thanks for any info

 

[happy medium]

I found this mabe some people can post some scores . Heres mine...

Avg.518.3 , 607.4 mb/sec
max.768.6 , 900.7mb/sec
min. 67.7, 79.3 mb/sec

reverseblt.
477 fps
536 fps
292 fps

heres the link

http://www.karpfenteich.net/colorful/bitblt.html

 

[Stumps]

I believe there is very little difference in 2D performance between most (if not all) ATI and Nvidia cards....I don't think it would make much of a difference what card you get.

It was much easier back in the old days (pre Geforce 2 days)...if you wanted maximum 2D performance and quality you went for a Matrox G450 or G550 based card...and pretty much gave up on 3D performance (they weren't entirely horrible...but not good either) unless you has some Voodoo 2's lying around.

my scores for the bitblt test

BitBlt:
avg: 1166.5 fps [1366.9 MB/sec]
max: 1531.0 fps [1794.2 MB/sec]
min: 375.5 fps [440.1 MB/sec]

ReverseBlt:
avg: 633.5 fps [742.4 MB/sec]
max: 1325.8 fps [1553.6 MB/sec]
min: 254.1 fps [297.7 MB/sec]

 

[MadAd]

awesome, thanks - ill post my scores as soon as i get to reboot this

will find out if SLI makes any difference too, one of my cards has to come out tonight or tomorrow (it shouldnt, but everything seems smoother and better performing with 2)

Everyone feel free to post your scores, its about time we had some kind of idea what these 2d engines are doing- if we get enough i might do a chart or list or something.


Edit:

<<< Remembers my G100 and 2x Voodoo 2s fondly

I did try running on an old p4/Ati 8500 but it crashed and burned after 2 windows, i couldnt even watch a video on it, so there must have been improvements in 2d, just all the sites exclusively focus on 3d these days so any changes have gone unseen.

 

[swtethan]

BitBlt:
avg: 5618.2 fps [6583.9 MB/sec]
max: 8057.5 fps [9442.4 MB/sec]
min: 1003.9 fps [1176.4 MB/sec]

ReverseBlt:
avg: 6457.2 fps [7567.0 MB/sec]
max: 7910.6 fps [9270.2 MB/sec]
min: 3850.0 fps [4511.7 MB/sec]


rofl, seriously 8000 fps?

 

[nonameo]

the boca 1mb ISA VGA card in my closet?

Actually, matrox is supposed to have good 2D quality.

 

[Rhoxed]

BitBlt:
avg: 985.7 fps [1155.1 MB/sec]
max: 1579.0 fps [1850.4 MB/sec]
min: 395.9 fps [463.9 MB/sec]

ReverseBlt:
avg: 1020.2 fps [1195.6 MB/sec]
max: 1209.7 fps [1417.6 MB/sec]
min: 425.3 fps [498.4 MB/sec]

 

[taltamir]

your monitor displays 60 frames per second... The cards all make thosands of frames per second on 2d... so it is completely irrelevant on which card can make a few hundred FPS more on 2d. They will both end up the exact same speed. (and most likely they will be with vsync limiting them to 60 fps).

That is why you can't find any info.

Oh, and every single 2d game I know of today uses CPU rendering... cpus are plenty powerful today to do that kind of simplistic rendering and that makes things alot simpler...

Try googling ur quan masters for an excellent 2d game (that uses cpu rendering)

 

[MadAd]

Ok guys, thanks for the replies, I have a problem with the BltTest s/w in that successive test results vary wildly, in ten successive tests results can vary by 10% easily so its a guide rather than a test.

Also my results for SLI vs non SLI are completely out of whack (SLId cards perform 30% less well than single??!!) with scores around the 600 and 900 fps levels, when in practice I noticed a very slight improvement in the amount of open windows I have with the second card in.

Its interesting that the 8800 series gets bigger score than anything else tho, I wonder if thats the effect of the quad core too?

Other than that I'm in the dark. For years I've been focused on 3d hardware and right now the only stress test i can do is opening multiple windows until it falls over, theres got to be an easier way to compare 2d generations? Are there any hardware sites that use a 2d test frequently?

I cant even find much information differentiating what nvidia cards have the same 2d subsystem and what do not.

 

[Griswold]

BitBlt:
avg: 6347.9 fps [7438.9 MB/sec]
max: 7323.9 fps [8582.7 MB/sec]
min: 2103.4 fps [2465.0 MB/sec]

ReverseBlt:
avg: 7190.7 fps [8426.6 MB/sec]
max: 7331.4 fps [8591.5 MB/sec]
min: 6789.1 fps [7956.0 MB/sec]

Thats with a HD3870

Your SLI results shouldnt surprise you. SLI isnt supposed to do anything with 2d functions like these. And in the case of SLI / CF, it often seems to be the case that if it doesnt help, it hurts.

And dont put too much weight into taltamirs postings, it seems that, once again, the purpose of this tool flew right over his head, considering he is talking about absolute frames per second and vsync which really doesnt matter if you use a video card / driver that doesnt perform these function calls correctly and thus results in really poor 2d performance (which isnt only important for 2d games).

 

[lyssword]

BitBlt:
avg: 1100.8 fps [1290.0 MB/sec]
max: 1739.3 fps [2038.3 MB/sec]
min: 87.5 fps [102.5 MB/sec]

ReverseBlt:
avg: 451.4 fps [529.0 MB/sec]
max: 481.6 fps [564.4 MB/sec]
min: 414.0 fps [485.2 MB/sec]
e2140@2.66 x800xl

 

[hclarkjr]

this is my opinion but i have always firmly believed that ATI video cards have better 2D performance than Nvidia. they have better picture quality to me. i have owned cards from both so i can not be accused of being a fanboy either

 

[Dman877]

But nvidia cards have digital vibrance control. That doubles your 2d fps dude.

 

[JustaGeek]

7950GT SC, E6600 @ 2.4GHz, 775Dual-VSTA

BitBlt:
avg: 139.1 fps [163.0 MB/sec]
max: 141.1 fps [165.4 MB/sec]
min: 129.9 fps [152.2 MB/sec]

ReverseBlt:
avg: 471.1 fps [552.1 MB/sec]
max: 482.9 fps [565.8 MB/sec]
min: 448.2 fps [525.2 MB/sec]


8800GT OC, E6600 @2.925GHz, P5N-E SLI

BitBlt:
avg: 1299.1 fps [1522.4 MB/sec]
max: 4186.7 fps [4906.2 MB/sec]
min: 611.3 fps [716.3 MB/sec]

ReverseBlt:
avg: 1354.3 fps [1587.0 MB/sec]
max: 1711.6 fps [2005.7 MB/sec]
min: 480.2 fps [562.7 MB/sec]


Laptop ATI Radeon Xpress 200, Sempron 2.0GHz

BitBlt:
avg: 88.7 fps [104.0 MB/sec]
max: 422.2 fps [494.7 MB/sec]
min: 15.2 fps [17.9 MB/sec]

ReverseBlt:
avg: 209.3 fps [245.3 MB/sec]
max: 424.9 fps [498.0 MB/sec]
min: 84.2 fps [98.7 MB/sec


And Quicken 2007 interface is VERY slow with 8800GT, as described in my thread here:

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2128407&enterthread=y

 

[hclarkjr]

here is my 1800xt with 512mb memory -
BitBlt:
avg: 488.8 fps [572.9 MB/sec]
max: 1043.9 fps [1223.3 MB/sec]
min: 17.5 fps [20.6 MB/sec]

ReverseBlt:
avg: 873.0 fps [1023.0 MB/sec]
max: 1026.2 fps [1202.6 MB/sec]
min: 434.3 fps [508.9 MB/sec]

 

[hclarkjr]

like i said earlier the picture quality has to come into play also, not just the frame rate.

 

[hclarkjr]

nvidia cards for years sacrificed picture quality for frame rates. that is less so today but still a factor