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

From a Linux Perspective

[niko9]

It doesn't bother me that much who has the fastest card. All I know is that this sort of competition is great in the Linux arena. With the recent trends in 3d animation studios transition to Linux, they can't ignore the need for high quality drivers.

Nvidia has really polished up their Linux drivers recently, and in response ATI has done the same.

This means Linux is one step closer to gaining a foothold on the desktop. Hopefully this will will spur interest 3D gaming on the linux platform.

One can dream of the day of playing Battlefield 1942 on Linux. I'm using the Liux FireGL drivers on my Radeon 9700 Pro, and so far, they work great for playing RTCW ET.

Consumer Card Comparison

[heli0]

"Why is it that both products we'll be looking at today, the [$725--128MB]ATi FireGL X1 and [$1500--256MB]NVIDIA Quadro FX 2000, share nearly identical hardware with their consumer counterparts, yet cost 3 to 5 times as much? The answer goes back to those highly specialized applications again, and optimizing the hardware and drivers to accelerate performance to the best of the core Graphics Processor's ability"

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It would have been nice if they also benchmarked a $400 GeForceFX5900-256MB and a $425 Radeon 9800Pro-256MB then. (current prices from pricewatch)

Anyone have a link to another review that includes these?

Important tests missing.

[DraconPern]

I don't see dual monitor setups mentioned in the article. Does ATI's output quality stand up to NVidia's?

I have a Radeon 8500, and I can tell you that ATI has some serious issues with output signal quality. On my main crt monitor, I can still see occasional sheering and small display glitches. The 2nd monitor quality was even worse. I am using a pci TNT card to get 2nd monitor suupport.

Judging by the picture of the ATI card, the second DVI connection may have problems. It is an extra board so there is not a continuous trace which can introduce all sorts of problems (like contact resistance, oxidation, etc.) Yes, it is a digital signal, but it's like putting an ide ribbon cable with really short wires. You are going to get all sorts of problems...

Professional cards

[Ian-K]

While this may be brushing 'redundant/offtopic', I have to say that getting one of those may cost you a bit more, but it's much nicer than a consumer graphics card.

What the author fails to mention is that there's better R&D (build quality?) put in there. Not just application-specific optimisations. If they *had* tested the consumer equivalents, they'd see them outperformed, methinks. That's my experience, anyway.

Back in '98 I had a Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro (yes, the FireGL series was owned by Diamond then), which was matching/outperforming many 'new' gaming cards my mates were buying (it was a fairly old model at the time, IIRC). Thing is, I hadn't paid a fortune for it, as you might think. It was a bit expensive, but not *that* different from what my mates were paying.

Now I have a FireGL 8800 and again the performance is there. Gaming-wise, I can play GTA3 and CMR3 at resolutions previously undreamt of with the 9500 (1600x1200).

Having said that, it's a pain to get (linux) support by ATI. Ever tried emailing them? Up 'till March (IIRC) things were OK and they even had good drivers. But now it's all shaky and iffy, as we all know.

Now I'm looking for a 3DLabs/NVidia. The former are increasing their linux support (I even recall a /. article on it), while the latter have been traditionally good with it.

It would have been very interesting if they'd included the VP990 Pro or the VP970 in the comparison...

Trian

Only 1 benchmark matters.

[Raven42rac]

How often does it fsck up a render? With consumer cards, who cares if you mess up a render, because it may just be a temporary jaggy, they just want to be all out speed-demons. But, with these corporate cards, a messed up render could be a misplaced weld, or something along those lines.