Why by GeForce when FireGL so cheap?

[grimas]

Can someone tell me why I would want to spend $250 on a GeForce4 when you can get a FireGL card so cheap? From what I can tell, either of these cards below should leave the GeForce in the dust. I got an email from ATI today listing their price reduction on their FireGL cards:

FireGL 8800 now has a new SRP of $349.00. That is a $250.00 price reduction.
The
new reseller cost for FireGL 8800 retail is just $279.00.

FireGL 8700 now has a new SRP of $149.00. That is a $150.00 price reduction.
The
new reseller cost for FireGL 8700 retail is $124.00.

I know these cards are "professional" graphics card but how do they compare to those cards directed towards "regular" consumers? I'm a game player who doesn't use my current card for DVD or TV-out. Why wouldn't I want to get one of these cards instead of an GeForce4? Pros or cons?

Thanks!

Grimas

 

[Rand]

If your not going to be utilizing the applications the FireGL was intended for then it is a waste of money.
The GF4 is a faster gaming card then the FireGL 8XXX, with a marginally better 3D feature set from a gamers point of view, and also much better compatibility in games.
At identical clockspeeds the typical R8500 will outperform a FireGL board, and will retain much better compatibility with common games.


Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but positive things to say about FireGL. I have an exceptionally high regard for the FireGL driver team, and it's got a great price/performance ratio.
But it's not a gaming solution. It can handle games, but a consumer board designed for gaming is a preferable solution. The drivers were never designed for gaming uses, and a few of the extraneous features can cause compatibility issues with games expecting to find a typical Radeon board.

For the average person, the FireGL would most likely be a worse option then a Radeon 8500.


For it's intended market, I consider the FireGL preferable to nVidia's cpmpeting Quadro, and has a few advantages over the WildCat VP though it's generally inferior. The driver support is exceptional, very well rounded and versatile. A wide variety of supported optimized applications. Extremely efficent at taking advantage of extraneous processor instruction sets such as SSE/3DNow! etc.
It manages and utilizes bandwidth from the processor effectively, and FireGL driver team has worked their usual magic when it comes to rendering multiple light sources. It's performance is above and beyond what I'd expect from the hardware.

In it's intended market I love the FireGL. As a consumer solution it displays average compatibity at best, and poor performance at it's price point.
Use it for it's intended purpose and it'll make the GeForce4 look sad, and leave you wondering where nVidia's vaunted driver support went.
Use it for gaming and you'll find yourself yearning for a regular Radeon 8500.

Professional cards and consumer cards seldom perform well outside of their intended niche.

 

[TerryMathews]

As I understand it, the 8700 and 8800 are based on the 8500LE and 8500, respectively.

A) The price point on those FireGL cards lies in-between Ti4200 and Ti4400, which I believe coresponds fairly well with performance.
B) The ATi cards have no real advantages over similar nVidia cards.
C) Long term ATi driver support is suck. Just ask any ATi Rage Pro owner.

 

[Rand]

C) Long term ATi driver support is suck. Just ask any ATi Rage Pro owner.

Long term FireGL driver support is unparallelled by any but 3DLabs. I would take a FireGL board over anything nVidia has ever produced in terms of driver quality and would be hard pressed to choose between FireGL and 3DLabs. If not for it's relatively poor multiprocessor optimizations, and slight underperformance on low end processors I would say FireGL is solidly better then 3DLabs.
One need only look towards FireGL's stellar reputation dating back to the FireGL 1 from Diamond for evidence of that.

Saying FireGL has poor driver support is like saying the GeForce4 is slower then a Voodoo 1.
The driver teams for the Radeon and FireGL work seperately and only collaberate on basic issues.

I think I can honestly say this is only the second time I have EVER heard anyone comment negatively on FireGL driver support.

 

[kmmatney]

I think the main problem with the FireGl for gaiming is that most games will not be tested with it, and fixing any glitches the game may have with a board will be low priority for game makers, compared to makingit work with GeForce and Radeon boards.

 

[hans007]

according to the aceshardware roundup the firegl is a pretty crappy professional card.

 

[daddyo]

according to the aceshardware roundup the firegl is a pretty crappy professional card.

Yes.

Can someone tell me why you'd want a FireGL when you can get a Geforce 4 (or even GF3) for so cheap?

 

[CloudsShinji]

C) Long term ATi driver support is suck. Just ask any ATi Rage Pro owner.

Actually, I used mine for the past two and a half years () with no complaints. Now my AiW 8500 128MB is suiting me just fine, as well.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Can someone tell me why you'd want a FireGL when you can get a Geforce 4 (or even GF3) for so cheap?

It helps to read previous posts...Rand pretty much summed it up. FireGL boards are in NO WAY intended to compete with the GeForce 4 (or even GF3). FireGL was acquired by ATI in order for ATI to better compete against nVidia in the professional market (against nVidia's Quadro line). FireGL boards are not constructed to play games nor are the drivers optimized for them. Instead FireGL boards are aimed at the CAD or DCC market and could own any average Radeon or GeForce card in the tasks they were designed to perform in.

As far as price/performance/features/drivers goes, the FireGL 8xxx boards are more than able to compete with rival Quadro boards...

 

[hans007]

Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles

Can someone tell me why you'd want a FireGL when you can get a Geforce 4 (or even GF3) for so cheap?

It helps to read previous posts...Rand pretty much summed it up. FireGL boards are in NO WAY intended to compete with the GeForce 4 (or even GF3). FireGL was acquired by ATI in order for ATI to better compete against nVidia in the professional market (against nVidia's Quadro line). FireGL boards are not constructed to play games nor are the drivers optimized for them. Instead FireGL boards are aimed at the CAD or DCC market and could own any average Radeon or GeForce card in the tasks they were designed to perform in.

As far as price/performance/features/drivers goes, the FireGL 8xxx boards are more than able to compete with rival Quadro boards...

according to the roundup at aces hardware, the plain geforce beats the firegl and even some older wildcat boards do.


the firegl is just a radeon 8500 with different drivers just like the quadro 4 is just a geforce 4 . hopefully the firegl's based on the 9700 are good. now the firegl 2 is not a radeon based board but a true 3d llabs product.

 

[Rand]

according to the roundup at aces hardware, the plain geforce beats the firegl and even some older wildcat boards do.


the firegl is just a radeon 8500 with different drivers just like the quadro 4 is just a geforce 4 . hopefully the firegl's based on the 9700 are good. now the firegl 2 is not a radeon based board but a true 3d llabs product.

While I have nothing but the utmost respect for AcesHardware their last Pro3D roundup left MUCH to be desired. We've seen for nearly 6 months in tests from many sites that the FireGL 8700/8800 performs relatively poorly in the Spec ViewPerf synthetic subtests that made up the bulk of AcesHardware's testing suite, it's not exctly unknown that Spec ViewPerf tends to equate poorly to real world application performance however.... even the subtests drawn from the actual applications don't reflect very well upon the real applications performance.

In all Aces results they've totalled wireframe, shading, texture + shading, and shading + vertex coloring results together, and give us little indication of relative performance in each individual field. They make little differentiation between tests that use smooth or flat gourad shading versus those that use more complicated forms of shading such as smooth blinn shading or phong shading.
I could go on but one needs only look through Ace's archives to see the multitudes of people that were less then impressed with Ace's last Professional rendering review.
I should state I mean no disrespect towards Aces, indeed I put Johan De Gelas (the author of the piece) on a level only slightly below Hans de Vries.

In real world application performance the FireGL 8800 tends to often outperform the Quadro 4 900XGL in most applications.
It is certainly faster in complex shading tests, and performs extremely well in rendering 5+ light sources, as a result it performs very well in 3D-animation apps and holds its own in most CAD tests.
It's weaker in both raw fillrate and basic texturing, and wireframe performance leaves a bit to be desired.

The Quadro4 series lacks a bit in pure polygon throughput, but otherwise holds up well. It's sub-pixel accuracy is also a string point in it's price range, comparing well with 3DLabs high end WildCat III series.
It's texturing fillrate is extremely impressive and is bar none the best cards available if you want textured previews of 3D scenes in a window, this fact has always made the Quadro4 a popular board for 3DSM due to it's easily coping with rendering textured scenes in real time in a window, while allowing the artist to continue adjusting the scene in the main application view area.
The traditional flaw with the Quadro series has been driver support, and relatively lagging period of time before attaining ISV certified drivers.

now the firegl 2 is not a radeon based board but a true 3d llabs product.

The FireGL 2-4 are not 3DLabs products, the FireGL 2 was originally released by SonicBlue and based upon gomery and raster engines powered by IBM hardware.

 

[CubicZirconia]

Originally posted by: Rand

according to the roundup at aces hardware, the plain geforce beats the firegl and even some older wildcat boards do.


the firegl is just a radeon 8500 with different drivers just like the quadro 4 is just a geforce 4 . hopefully the firegl's based on the 9700 are good. now the firegl 2 is not a radeon based board but a true 3d llabs product.

While I have nothing but the utmost respect for AcesHardware their last Pro3D roundup left MUCH to be desired. We've seen for nearly 6 months in tests from many sites that the FireGL 8700/8800 performs relatively poorly in the Spec ViewPerf synthetic subtests that made up the bulk of AcesHardware's testing suite, it's not exctly unknown that Spec ViewPerf tends to equate poorly to real world application performance however.... even the subtests drawn from the actual applications don't reflect very well upon the real applications performance.

In all Aces results they've totalled wireframe, shading, texture + shading, and shading + vertex coloring results together, and give us little indication of relative performance in each individual field. They make little differentiation between tests that use smooth or flat gourad shading versus those that use more complicated forms of shading such as smooth blinn shading or phong shading.
I could go on but one needs only look through Ace's archives to see the multitudes of people that were less then impressed with Ace's last Professional rendering review.
I should state I mean no disrespect towards Aces, indeed I put Johan De Gelas (the author of the piece) on a level only slightly below Hans de Vries.

In real world application performance the FireGL 8800 tends to often outperform the Quadro 4 900XGL in most applications.
It is certainly faster in complex shading tests, and performs extremely well in rendering 5+ light sources, as a result it performs very well in 3D-animation apps and holds its own in most CAD tests.
It's weaker in both raw fillrate and basic texturing, and wireframe performance leaves a bit to be desired.

The Quadro4 series lacks a bit in pure polygon throughput, but otherwise holds up well. It's sub-pixel accuracy is also a string point in it's price range, comparing well with 3DLabs high end WildCat III series.
It's texturing fillrate is extremely impressive and is bar none the best cards available if you want textured previews of 3D scenes in a window, this fact has always made the Quadro4 a popular board for 3DSM due to it's easily coping with rendering textured scenes in real time in a window, while allowing the artist to continue adjusting the scene in the main application view area.
The traditional flaw with the Quadro series has been driver support, and relatively lagging period of time before attaining ISV certified drivers.

now the firegl 2 is not a radeon based board but a true 3d llabs product.

The FireGL 2-4 are not 3DLabs products, the FireGL 2 was originally released by SonicBlue and based upon gomery and raster engines powered by IBM hardware.

Rand is smart.