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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."
Neither runs faster than the Orchid Farenheit 180.
I used Lotus 123 and WordPerfect 5.1 as the test applications.
> 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."
...The FireGL looks like a much better value.
Not really. The benchmarks were very close in most of the tests and if you consider what the end of the article says:
At this point in time, various price search engines have the ATi FireGL X1 listed at or around $530. Conversely, the NVIDIA Quadro FX 2000 is listed at no less that $1250 and that's in the 128MB variant, not the 256MB model we tested. So with this in mind, the FireGL X1 price/performance ratio is rather compelling, at less than half the cost of the competing NVIDIA product.
The unofficial
Well I have used a Geforce MX 200, Geforce 3, Radeon 8500, Radeon 9500 non-pro, and just bought a Radeon 9800 non-pro (will be flashing with pro BIOS).
The Geforce 3 was a good card, but its the only one that has died on me.
No problems with any of the Radeons, and they sure are fast!
IMO, Nvidia's only good desktop offering right now is the FX 5600 Ultra, which has a value comparable to ATI.
The 5900 has a few more frames than the 9800 in UT2K3, but its image quality with is noticeably inferior to the Radeon.
The unofficial
Didn't have to.
Do I trust benchmarks? No.
Will I ever trust benchmarks? No.
Are benchmarks meaningful in any way? No.
Do benchmarks have any credibility whatsoever? No.
'nuff said
Apart from the fact nvidia got their asses kicked in most benchmarks it does indeed rock, yes. Especially the bit which claims the price for the damned thing is over 1200 USD a piece. Ah well, next time it will be an Ati I guess, considering they both fecking cheat with benchmarks these days I might as well go for the cheapest cheater.
Hate me!
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.
even if the ati card WAS faster, hell will freeze over before i ever buy another card from them!
they have crappy support, crappy hardware (as in reliability) and crappy drivers. i've had so many ATI cards die on me it's not even funny.
on the other hand i've had only one nvidia card die, due to rough handling and no fan (it came loose somehow and i didn't notice it, probably in transport)
Man, I've handled well over 100 different models from at least a dozen manufacturers over at least as many years and I've never had a card die on me. If all these cards are dying on you then there's got to be a reason - just what the hell are you using them for and in what environment? Unless you're a big time overclocker,video cards are pretty damn sturdy and the odds are that a card will outlast your use for it, so perhaps you need to re-examine just how you handle your cards and how much abuse that they're taking?
Having one card fail on you is unfortunate. Two, three or more smacks of carelessness.
(I'm not looking to troll here. I'm just comparing my extensive experience with yours.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
"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"
---
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?
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
I thought FireGL was from Diamond, not ATI. :p
In fact, I'm holding a FireGL right now... I'll sell it for $200! Less than what ATI charges.
god I wish peole would think before naming things sometimes.... USB2.0 vs USB2.0 "Hi-Speed"....
They should have also benchmarked the latest 3Dlabs cards in order to give us a proper frame of reference. For all we know, both these cards could be providing inferior performance compared to the latest Wildcat; good gaming performance doesn't necessarily translate into a good professional video card.
The Wildcats are also cheaper: $899 for the 512 MB VP990 Pro and $499 for the 256 MB VP880 Pro or the 128 MB VP970 (from the 3Dlabs eStore) compared to $530 for the cheapest 128 MB ATi FireGL X1 and $1250 for the cheapest 128 MB nVidia Quadro FX 2000 (the 256 MB variant was used for benchmarking).
Anyways, these aren't even ATi's and nVidia's top of the line cards; ATi's is the FireGL X2-256 and nVidia's is the Quadro FX 3000.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
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...
" But if it's fast enough for me as is and looks like it'll suffice for a couple of years, I don't care about the benchmarks."
I have a similar philosophy about cards. I also do 3D work. Here's my requirements:
1.) Does it support dual monitor? (not only support it, but good desktop support as well.)
2.) Does it do decent anti-aliasing? In 3D modelling, anti-aliasing makes a huge difference. When you're building your object, this graphics mode can reveal more about how your model will look when you go to render. It's worth the hit in FPS.
3.) Does it offer enough of a boost over the card I have now? Can I spend $200 and get 2x the speed?
I used to want a professional card. However, by limiting myself a bit, I've grown to become more efficient in handling the 3D assets. I know have a more structured workflow than I would have had if I had a much much quicker machine. I'm insanely curious what a Quadro would do for me, but man I have a hard time imagining it's worth the price tag.
However, I will likely change my tune soon. All the major 3D apps are taking much more advantage of the cards, previewing more and more of what the renderer will do. Modelling is anti-aliased, lens flares show up in real time, texturing, depth of field, motion blur, you name it. I can't help but think one day I'll be buying rendering cards instead of real time 3D cards.
"Derp de derp."
HotHardware
Um, pardon me, but...who?
Call me when you've got benchmarks from a real magazine(say a CAD/CAM, 3D graphics and/or animation, etc related magazine), and not two-guys-in-a-dorm-room-who-write-reviews-for-kick backs websites who run Unreal Tournament to benchmark professional graphics cards.
Case and point is their 'testbed' system: they used a "DFI LAN Party 875Pro" motherboard. They used Pentium 4's instead of workstation-class Xeon processors. IDE drives instead of SCSI. Folks, that's NOT a "workstation". A dual Xeon cHomPaq is a workstation.
Oh, and the benchmarks? One no-name benchmark, and 3D Studio Max. Oh, and Unreal Tournament. No fill rates, no polygon counts, no NOTHIN. No mention of Linux, which is tearing into the market like crazy among top computer animation houses.
This is pathetic- they're just a bunch of guys who compile daily linkages to other cheeseball review sites. They have no industry background, no experience, no nothing...just a P4 3GHz and a (probably pirated) copy of 3D Studio Max.
Please help metamoderate.
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.
/. article on it), while the latter have been traditionally good with it.
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
It would have been very interesting if they'd included the VP990 Pro or the VP970 in the comparison...
Trian
I'm no longer fed up with MS Windows: I go rid of them
Other benchmarks include a leaf blower and a flaming jar of gasoline. The leaf blower actually did quite well in the noise tests against the Nvidia card but lost out due to the fact that it consumes less power than the video card. Ati unfortunately did not fare as well, and lagged behind with the noise factor. An ATI spokesman recommended that the card be coupled with a "cheap ass Athlon CPU fan" which would develop a good rattle to help the card become more obnoxious.
The jar of flaming gasoline also did pretty good in the heat department against both cards, but unfortunately had to be refilled which was considered a drawback. Aside from that the life like animation the fire produced only ran at one frame rate, but was always consistent. Unfortunately the jar of gas lost out big time in the cost arena, but it seems that can be compensated for by tossing $1 bills into the flames at various intervals to get the costs up higher.
Some wondered why we didn't benchmark a toaster as well, or instead of a jar of gasoline - but as we pointed out before, a toaster is far to practical to compare in a contest of flushing money down the toilet.
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.
I hate sigs.