FireGLs and 3DLabs crushing Quadros

[imported_TheCadMan]

The new benches are coming out on these cards, and it looks like 3dLabs is the new king of workstation graphics. However, whats more interesting is that fact that ATI's migrange V5100 is beating the FX 4000 in several applications. The FX 4000 is $1600, the V5100 is $700 and the Wildcat realizm 100 is $900. I never expected this one and was shocked by it.

 

[SneakyStuff]

Perhaps thats why nVidia moved to the 6 series? and is making quadro 6 series cards?

 

[imported_TheCadMan]

I'm talking about the 6 series cards the quadro 4000 is the 6800 ultra the V5100 is an x800 pro the realizm is something new.

 

[Genx87]

Depends on what you are doing.
And better yet SLI will pretty much destroy what the other two can do

 

[SickBeast]

OP, where are you getting your benchmarks? What mainstream graphics card is the V5100 based on? I haven't even heard of the card yet; I thought the X1/X2 were their latest FireGL cards.

 

[Genx87]

Well the only review I have seen pits the Quadro FX3400 vs the GL V5100

The 3400 is the equiv of a 6800GT with slower memory. The 5100 is an X800 Pro equiv. The 3400 was on avg 5.6% faster.

 

[reever]

http://www.spec.org/gpc/opc.data/vp8/summary.html

 

[imported_TheCadMan]

No The V5100 is slower and has half the ram of the 3400 check the new specview 8.0 benchs

 

[gururu]

Originally posted by: reever
http://www.spec.org/gpc/opc.data/vp8/summary.html

hard to argue with those numbers. Go Wildcat!!!

 

[Genx87]

The problem with using Spec to compare video cards is you arent doing it on an apples by apples comparison. But instead you are comparing a whole system.

The only review I can dig up quick that uses a standard MB + CPU + RAM is this

http://graphics.tomshardware.c...ic/20040816/index.html

 

[BFG10K]

http://www.spec.org/gpc/opc.data/vp8/summary.html

This is a joke right? How on earth can you compare video cards if you aren't using identical systems?

 

[gururu]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

http://www.spec.org/gpc/opc.data/vp8/summary.html

This is a joke right? How on earth can you compare video cards if you aren't using identical systems?

actually, I think they were just comparing retail workstations. If you look at the numbers though, you'll actually see that cpu speed doesn't significantly influence results; that is, systems with the same card give similar results regardless of cpu. there's something to gather from that.

toms paints a different picture and actually seems to favor the bang/buck offered by the FireGL.

 

[Genx87]

Yeah but in the market these cards are sold money isnt really an issue. You are probably paying an engineer or designer 60+K a year, software licenses can run into the thousands of dollars and your workstation will probably be 3K+.

I am interested in seeing how SLI works out. If they can see almost straight doubling of performance where the video card is the bottleneck then Nvidia will have a winner on its hands.

 

[gururu]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Yeah but in the market these cards are sold money isnt really an issue. You are probably paying an engineer or designer 60+K a year, software licenses can run into the thousands of dollars and your workstation will probably be 3K+.

I am interested in seeing how SLI works out. If they can see almost straight doubling of performance where the video card is the bottleneck then Nvidia will have a winner on its hands.

yea, the budgets I guess will let them stack cards to possibly get some truly fantastic results.

 

[BFG10K]

actually, I think they were just comparing retail workstations.

Different workstations.

If you look at the numbers though, you'll actually see that cpu speed doesn't significantly influence results;

That's not good enough.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Yeah but in the market these cards are sold money isnt really an issue. You are probably paying an engineer or designer 60+K a year, software licenses can run into the thousands of dollars and your workstation will probably be 3K+.

I am interested in seeing how SLI works out. If they can see almost straight doubling of performance where the video card is the bottleneck then Nvidia will have a winner on its hands.

Yes, but in any market, paying 100% more money for 5% more performance is often foolhardy. More importantly, the ATI V7100, which is based on the XT core with 256MB of DDR at 28.8GB/s and thus will perform faster than the Quadro FX3400 (given the ~20%+ performance difference between the X800 Pro and XT in most situations) has an MSRP of $1099, and (apparently) can be found for below that.

Not that this really matters to any of us laymen, though. Plus Nvidia's still go the leg up on driver development though - they seem to have been in the workstation market with competitive drivers for longer.

 

[Genx87]

Yes, but in any market, paying 100% more money for 5% more performance is often foolhardy.

It really depends on what you are doing. If you are rendering parts and pieces of a project that will yield a multi-million dollar windfall. And you can get it done 5% faster and could yield bonus's from the contract. Does it really matter if you paid 700 dollars more for the card?

More importantly, the ATI V7100, which is based on the XT core with 256MB of DDR at 28.8GB/s and thus will perform faster than the Quadro FX3400 (given the ~20%+ performance difference between the X800 Pro and XT in most situations) has an MSRP of $1099, and (apparently) can be found for below that.

Yes but Nvidia will be releasing the 4400 and will have SLI.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Yes, but in any market, paying 100% more money for 5% more performance is often foolhardy.

It really depends on what you are doing. If you are rendering parts and pieces of a project that will yield a multi-million dollar windfall. And you can get it done 5% faster and could yield bonus's from the contract. Does it really matter if you paid 700 dollars more for the card?

It sounds like you're going to great lengths to provide an example to prove your point. Forget the names of the companies for a second here. For something that costs ~$1700 vs something that costs ~$800, does a 4-6% difference for the more expensive item sound rational to you?

More importantly, the ATI V7100, which is based on the XT core with 256MB of DDR at 28.8GB/s and thus will perform faster than the Quadro FX3400 (given the ~20%+ performance difference between the X800 Pro and XT in most situations) has an MSRP of $1099, and (apparently) can be found for below that.

Yes but Nvidia will be releasing the 4400 and will have SLI.

But at what price? The Quadro 3400 is already double the price of the 5100, that means 4X the price for SLI 3400's and god knows how much more for SLI 4400's.

I can see SLI whooping the crap out of everything, and thus in time-sensitive/money-is-no-object cases it would be the clearcut choice, but at face value, this is a pretty impressive showing for ATI, to be this competitive at such a price advantage.

And what about things that can be rendered on multiple machines (ie broken up into 'chunks' to render). I'm reaching here because this is not my domain of expertise, but if you had a job you could break up onto, say 2-4 machines running V5100 or V7100's at the same cost as an SLI 3400/4400 system, then that would pretty much negate any advantage SLI has or that 5% performance boost for double the cost.

 

[Genx87]

It sounds like you're going to great lengths to provide an example to prove your point. Forget the names of the companies for a second here. For something that costs ~$1700 vs something that costs ~$800, does a 4-6% difference for the more expensive item sound rational to you?

Hardly going through great lengths. This is how the business works. When I build a server that can get x amount done in y amount of time. If I can get x done 5% faster for 50% more cost but it generates much more revenue than the costs then I build the server.

In the markets these things are sold cost is not really a factor. Especially when you factor in the labor costs and software licenses. 1K difference is chump change and hardly worth the effort to worry about. If the costs are outweighed by the increase productivity then it doesnt matter if the card costs 2000 dollars more.

But at what price? The Quadro 3400 is already double the price of the 5100, that means 4X the price for SLI 3400's and god knows how much more for SLI 4400's.

And if you can get the job done 10% faster and generate more revenue because of this then it is worth it.

I can see SLI whooping the crap out of everything, and thus in time-sensitive/money-is-no-object cases it would be the clearcut choice, but at face value, this is a pretty impressive showing for ATI, to be this competitive at such a price advantage.

And what about things that can be rendered on multiple machines (ie broken up into 'chunks' to render). I'm reaching here because this is not my domain of expertise, but if you had a job you could break up onto, say 2-4 machines running V5100 or V7100's at the same cost as an SLI 3400/4400 system, then that would pretty much negate any advantage SLI has or that 5% performance boost for double the cost.

But then you would likely have 2x the labor costs because you will have two people working on the same job

I dont really deal much with this stuff except for our engineers. But most of the cost difference is really neglible when you look at the overall costs. And while 5% doesnt seem like a big deal. If it can generate more money than the cost then it is worth the extra costs. And who knows, if a project takes a long time to render that 5% can translate into hours or even days saved.

 

[imported_TheCadMan]

Find me a CAD program that would be limited on a machine because it didn't have SLI. We are not dealing with games here; faster fill rates may not always indicate better performance. I think 3Dlabs has really made a great product with the realism series, and they get my vote.

 

[Drayvn]

What the guy said above, i dont think SLI will do anything in terms of CAD stuff and CGI stuff really.

SLI is about performance, and u wouldnt need it in this working world, only gaming.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Drayvn
What the guy said above, i dont think SLI will do anything in terms of CAD stuff and CGI stuff really.

SLI is about performance, and u wouldnt need it in this working world, only gaming.

As someone who uses these OpenGL cards professionally, there *is* indeed a great use for SLI. Any graphics card eventually "hits the wall" when you are modelling in 3D Max/AutoCAD. By that I mean once you hit a certain polygon count and level of complexity, your graphics card chokes and the program becomes a slideshow. For people doing large scale commercial work or highly detailed scenes, SLI is a Godsend.

The new ATi cards look like an excellent value, but I continue to view their drivers with a great deal of skepticism. The reason they are able to sell the cards so cheap likely lies in the fact that the X800 architecture is very similar to R300; the driver production was probably very simple.

I'm just going to wait until my next large project crops up and I'll buy whatever is best for my situation. I don't think I'd use anything but nVidia though, unless ATi can pull a rabbit out of it's driver hat.

 

[Cat]

NVidia's SLI solution improves geometry throughput as well.

 

[Drayvn]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: Drayvn
What the guy said above, i dont think SLI will do anything in terms of CAD stuff and CGI stuff really.

SLI is about performance, and u wouldnt need it in this working world, only gaming.

As someone who uses these OpenGL cards professionally, there *is* indeed a great use for SLI. Any graphics card eventually "hits the wall" when you are modelling in 3D Max/AutoCAD. By that I mean once you hit a certain polygon count and level of complexity, your graphics card chokes and the program becomes a slideshow. For people doing large scale commercial work or highly detailed scenes, SLI is a Godsend.

The new ATi cards look like an excellent value, but I continue to view their drivers with a great deal of skepticism. The reason they are able to sell the cards so cheap likely lies in the fact that the X800 architecture is very similar to R300; the driver production was probably very simple.

I'm just going to wait until my next large project crops up and I'll buy whatever is best for my situation. I don't think I'd use anything but nVidia though, unless ATi can pull a rabbit out of it's driver hat.

Oh ok, maybe so, i just dont feel that they need 1 card to render 50% of the workload while the other does the rest, it to me doesnt seem useful, but again, thats just my opinion, i see SLI working better in the gaming world really, but on the more budget orientated ppl.

 

[Cat]

I've quickly hit the transform ceilings on all the card's I've used at work. NVidia, ATi, and 3DLabs. I'd welcome any increase iin the area.