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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
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
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.
"Are benchmarks meaningful in any way? No.
Do benchmarks have any credibility whatsoever? No."
are you insane? are the people that modded you up insane?
so a company that does 3d design needs new cards for their systems.. what do you suggest they do? buy the most expensive card on the market and hope its the best? buy the most expensive one they can afford? buy an assortment of cards and try every one themselves then decide which is best then try to return the other cards?
or be sane and read a review of various cards that TEST them, with something thats called BENCHMARKING.
is benchmarking a perfect science? no. will it ever be? no. but they are of use like it or not.