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NVIDIA's New Pro Graphics Quadro FX 3000 Reviewed
SpinnerBait writes "NVIDIA recently took the wraps off their next generation Workstation Graphics
card, the Quadro FX 3000. This card is based on the same general GPU
architecture as the NV35 but optimized for CAD and DCC applications.
This article over at HotHardware shows what the new Quadro FX 3000 is capable of
and it makes a strong showing. However, you've got to pay to play (or
work) on this card, that's for sure."
And yet the hardware producers continue churning out bigger, faster machines, as if anyone will ever need a 10GHz CPU. When will enough be, finally, enough?
:-)
It's because people keep using more and more things like perl and Java.
OK sorry, cheap shot.
Dual DVI output: Drives two independent digital displays at 1600 x1200, or one at 3840x24005.
Nice.
Sounds like the perfect card for the perfect monitor
9.2 million pixels at 0.1245mm stripe pitch, 3840x2400 native resolution.
Now, that my friends, is nice.
According to this, 20 terabytes. Now please direct me to the store that sells cheap pcs with 20 terabytes of ram.
Actually that'd be tall screen or something.
The first value is the horizontal.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
According to this article, DCC stands for Digital Content Creation.
Did you read the article? Some of the benchmarks show that the workstation cards do the job at a magnitude of 3 times faster in some test than the fastest gaming card from NVIDIA.
If you need this speed, then you pay for it. Paying say $2k for a video card is not much if it makes your employees more productive.
You spent 3 grand on a CAD card so your brother could play Dark Age of Camelot? I think not.
Obviously the entire library has not been digitized but we can estimate:
19 Million books * 3MB = 57TB
2.6 Million Recordings * 100MB each = 260TB
12 Million Photographs * 2MB = 24TB
4.8 Million Maps * 15MB = 72TB
56 Million Manuscripts * 3MB = 168TB
Total - 581 TB
Those are really rough estimates with some pretty broad assumptions:
1) looking at my ebooks they are around 3MB each.
2) What does recordings mean and would they be wav FLAC ogg mp3. 100 sounded good to me as an average (some recordings may be whole albums - some may be just speeches).
3) 2MB is probably low for good-quality scans but who knows what size the photos are.
4) These would be along the same line as photos just bigger.
5) Manuscripts and books have to be around the same size?
I appreciate the effort with the SPECopc benchmarks, but review sites need to put more effort into testing a card like this. I cannot see what the reviewers were thinking by not putting this card up against what it's price point is aimed at - specifically Wildcat cards.
Just take a model of some hundred thousand triangles, and render them as wireframe. The gaming card ("stock" as you call it) will just slow down to a crawl. Add a few clipping planes, and the frame rate gets even worse. But the Quadro cards does indeed cater this common usage in CAD, and charge accordingly.
Now, you may say it's pretty much the same hardware, and you might not be that far wrong. A couple of years ago you could "upgrade" a GeForce card to a Quadro card just by hacking some software. Don't think that is possible anymore.
There IS a reason, but its a high cost setup. The Quadro FX 3000 can do Dual DVI at 1600x1200 on each screen. Very few cards can do dual DVI at this resolution. In fact the only other one I know of is the Quadro4 XGL 900 (which I use to drive my viewsonic vp201mb LCDs). Many high end game cards can now do insane dual monitor resolutions, but only dual analog is supported; or if they do support dual dvi, they only support it at 1280x1024. I think the Matrox Parahelia can do Dual DVI @ 1600x1200, but I bet UT2k3 doesn't run as well as on my Quadro. And with 3200 pixels of width, you can set a nice high field of view.
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
21-24"
The Sony Trinitron CPD-G500 21" monitors can do 2048*1536 @ 75Hz. Their 24" widescreen does 2304 x 1440 @ 80Hz. Someone else may have a better monitor but I haven't seen em =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
We use IBM T221 displays at work in conjunction with Quadro video cards. The cards we have can drive the display at 25 Hz. Guess what? No migraines. Guess why? It's an LCD screen. The only thing the refresh rate affects is how fast the screen can be updated. So, you can have some problems with mouse pointer display lag, but you don't have flicker problems like you would on a CRT. So, it wouldn't be very good for full motion video, but it's fantastic for displaying static high resolution images.
Yah, I looked at the high-end cards and looked at what software I would be using that would push it, mostly popular first-person-shooter games, and decided on the NVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 128MB. It's the most bang for the buck. Hell, running on a P4 2.0 GHz with 1GB RAM, any game would be happy.
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
It depends on your application.
I have a GeForce Ti4200. One of my mechanical engineers has a Quadro 4. Autodesk Inventor is *much* faster on his system. The GF is good enough for me, because I'm the PHB and only fire up Inventor now and then. It's not good enough for him.
I'm ordering a new system for one of the other engineers. I'm leaning towards the Quadro FX 1000. The FX 500 might be good enough, and the FX 2000 and FX 3000 are overkill for the work that we do. But I can see where other people have work that justifies spending for the fastest cards.
In random configurations, yes, there are issues with NVIDIA's stability. In closed configurations, there is not. I've never had a problem on any of my systems with NVIDIA's drivers, so its quite possible to build a system that runs rock solid with NVIDIA's drivers. Companies that are using NVIDIA on Linux can use these configurations, so that's not a problem.
As for Linux's importance to NVIDIA, remember three things:
1) Being the only option for high-end 3D on Linux is a big boon to them. A lot of computer graphics companies are moving to Linux (ILM, as I mentioned, runs Linux on almost all of their graphics workstations). These users are a very profitable market segment for NVIDIA's high end hardware (like the Quadro this article is about).
2) Being the only option on Linux is great for publicity. Gaming geeks are at least aware of Linux, and many have fooled around with it. Running on Linux is nice PR towards this segment.
3) Maintaining these drivers doesn't cost NVIDIA much. Their driver architecture is highly modular, so being cross platform is relatively inexpensive.
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