ATi FireGL X1 Vs. NVIDIA Quadro FX 2000

SpinnerBait writes "The professional graphics card arena has been heating up as of late, with new products from ATi and NVIDIA hitting the streets on the heels of SIGGRAPH unveilings. In a first of two article series, HotHardware has a showcase with benchmarks on the ATi FireGL X1 and NVIDIA Quadro FX 2000. It seems as though NVIDIA still has a stronghold in this market, as their card seems to dominate many of the benchmark runs shown here."

Comments

To The Misinformed

[palp]

Since I'm seeing a lot of this, a note to the uninformed/misinformed who didn't RTFA or even much of the blurb:

These are NOT cards for gaming, they are for professional graphics work. Very different market, so please refrain from telling us how you don't need a high end video card or don't play video games. It's of no consequence.

Re:Leave reviewing to the big boys

[afidel]

One no-name benchmark, and 3D Studio Max.

No name???
Guess you don't do much with CAD/CAM, Solidworks is one of the most featurefull CAD apps out there, its usefullness is second to only possibly CADIA. At my last job the physical design guys modified their AP encasement after running Solidworks simulations which pointed out non-optimal heatflow from the CPU to the case exterior. They built up the case from components whos exact thermal, electrical and other properties were in the materials database.

You are however correct that this was not a good test for workstation class machines.

"me too"

[Large Green Mallard]

I'm a systems person at a university department.. over the last 2 years, with all the various machines at work and "friends", I've probably been in contact with about 600 -700 machines.

Of these, I've had to replace 3 video cards. One early AGP Matrox, an AGP TNT 2 M64, and a PCI S3 VirgeDX. All of them more than 3 years old. And the TNT2 was a maybe, but after fitzing with Windows for 2 hours, and plonking in another TNT2 and having it work perfectly, replacing it was an easier option all round.

OT, but if you want to know what dies a lot, it's hard drives, mice, monitors and power supplies... about 30 mice per year and about 15 each of hard drives, monitors and PSUs.

for you cheap bastards...

[Alpha_Nerd]

There's no need to actually buy a FireGl X1 as you can easily soft mod a Radeon 9700 Pro into one. instructions can be found here.

Re:FireGL has MUCH better Price / Performance

[Methuseus]

Also, the R300/350 cores can be linked together in up to 256 GPUs interconnected, running basically in SMP mode for graphics. ATI wins in that respect as far as base hardware works. Too bad ATI isn't making any of these multiple GPU cards themselves.

A much more robust review/test here ...

[Lightman_73]

HotHardware, where they test pro graphics card with games... cool...

Now, for the ones who want a quite better review of the FireGL X1, QuadroFX 2000, FireGL Z1, compared to 6 others pro boards (including 3DLabs Wildcat VP970), Tom's Hardware has a nice one, dated March, 21st (so not only HW has an all but complete review, it is much late, too) :

Tom's Hardware FireGL X1 vs QuadroFX 2000 Review

Have fun...

Few observations..

[clifgriffin]

The reviewers didn't seem to be quite the experts in the field they were commenting on. The article was short and used very few factors. I'd like to see a Tom's Hardware review. Even though ATI seems to have the edge right now with consumer video cards, I must say I'll probably stay with Nvidia. My past experiences with ATI's software and drivers has been bad. Besides that I can't afford to have the latest and greatest so it doesn't matter what I buy. ;-)