Which Video Cards Do You Want to See Reviewed?

[BOXXLABS]

Hi Jeff,

 

Great Idea.

 

In my lab, we do most of this testing routinely already for internal uses. Let me know if I can provide any help or insights into developing your testing methodology or analysis models.

 

I think it's been posted by a few people, And you know the rest, but I'll echo that it would be important to remember a few "givens":

 

- MAX/REVIT are widely known to be quite happy and snappy running "gaming cards" with the right drivers & settings applied. You won't find much difference in performance or stability between the "pro" cards and cheaper gaming cards for these two apps.

 

Other applications such as Maya, Inventor, Catia, Pro E, AutoCAD, etc are known (proven via testing and analysis) to benefit from pro level cards in stability, performance or image quality (line antialiasing).

 

You may want to limit your testing to MAX/Revit for this audience, but be careful not to extend any findings or final analysis of the different cards beyond the applications that were used in the testing.

 

- gaming engine benchmarks don't test real-world 3D design workflows or performance.

 

- SPECviewperf 10 uses very old versions of the viewport engines in all the various applications that are included in the test suite.

 

- 2D (and 2.5D) apps such as Photoshop, After effects, etc, are known to work just fine with most gaming cards and probably won't show any benefit from the use of Pro cards.

 

-be sure your test files are of sufficient complexity that even the fastest cards are being stressed and bogged down.

 

-be careful in the selection of test scenes. It's important to know which scenes are likely to be the best test for different aspects of GPU performance including different tests to check performance for pure vertex calulation, realtime lighting, and working with lots of very large textures.

 

 

 

Adam

Edited August 13, 2009 by BOXXLABS

[Jeff Mottle]

Hi Jeff,

 

Great Idea.

 

In my lab, we do most of this testing routinely already for internal uses. Let me know if I can provide any help or insights into developing your testing methodology or analysis models.

 

Thanks Adam! Appreciate all of the feedback and the quick call. Will keep in touch.

[zhopudey]

Hi, any update on this? Really looking forward to some geforce vs quadro battle royales.

[Jeff Mottle]

Hi, any update on this? Really looking forward to some geforce vs quadro battle royales.

 

I have been away on vacation for the last 3 weeks and will be following up with NVIDIA and ATI in the coming weeks. I've already had meetings with both about which video cards we will be able to get so I just need to finalize a few more things. I'll give everyone an update once I know more.

[Jeff Mottle]

Just a quick update on the cards for review.

 

NVIDIA

 

Quadro FX 4800 (received)

Quadro FX 3800 (received)

Quadro FX 1800 (received)

Quadro FX 580 (received)

GeForce 9800 (to be delivered)

Geforce 260 (to be delivered)

 

ATI

 

FirePro V8750s (to be delivered)

FirePro V8750 (received)

FirePro V8700 (received)

FirePro V7750 (received)

FirePro V5700 (received)

FirePro V3750 (received)

Edited September 21, 2009 by Jeff Mottle

[Derek Forreal]

please don't forget those of us that don't use Max. i'm a modo user and so am interested in OpenGL results not Direct3D.

 

also, i'm interested in the line AA too. are there specific cards/drivers that only AA the geometry and not grids? and of course, which cards perform best in this area?

 

There were a few reasons both companies were interested in having me review their cards:

 

1. They want to know why everyone is buying Geforce/FireGL vs Quadro/FirePro cards and what features, performance/price differential would push the decision to the Quadro/FireGL side.

 

i'm really surprised they know so little about their key markets. a browse through this forum (and others like it) gives more than enough info on why this is the case. in any case, i hope they don't use the info to make changes to drivers so that cheaper cards don't work as well as they do now...

[DanGrover]

Out of interest, is there a use to line AA other than aesthetic pleasing? Higher FPS and viewport render previewing (AO, shadows etc) have a tangible benefit, but I don't know why line AA is beneficial, other than perhaps for rendering previews?

[Derek Forreal]

Out of interest, is there a use to line AA other than aesthetic pleasing?

not really (at least not for me). but i found that AA switched on had little effect on viewport performance and of course straightened all the lines which makes my eyes tire far less and makes smaller details easier to see. it also helps when trying out different scenarios with non cad people as it is a much tidier model to look at.

[Hazdaz]

This sounds REALLY interesting.

 

Many of the things that I would like to see have already been posted above, but here is a short list anyways:

 

-Gaming cards versus "pro" cards.

 

-REAL LIFE application testing, and not just benchmarks.

 

-Results from not just MAX, but also programs like Maya, AutoCAD, SolidWorks, Inventor and others. Almost no one tests their videocards in all those apps.

 

-See if spending $XXX on a new videocard gives you better bang-for-your-buck than spending the same amount of money on a new CPU and/or RAM.

 

-Information on how these cards handle real-time rendering functions.

 

 

One of the newly introduced cards I am most interested in is the Quadro 1800 - it's the first "pro" card that has peaked my interested mostly because of it's price and the fact that it seems to be only marginally behind some of the fastest cards out there (ones that cost 4x as much).

[Jeff Mottle]

The apps I will be testing are:

 

3ds Max

Modo

AutoCAD

Revit

SketchUp

Photoshop

 

For now this is all I am going to be able to test. As it is this testing is going to take a A LOT of work.

 

If you have files for the apps above that you think are either average industry size or VERY large to max the card out, please send me an email at jmottle[at]cgarchitect.com. As all of the testing will be done on real world data, I need real world files.

[pablo scapi]

So, where can we see these test results?

Sounds very interesting, hope it doesn´t stay at nothing.

 

Cheers

[Jeff Mottle]

So, where can we see these test results?

Sounds very interesting, hope it doesn´t stay at nothing.

 

Cheers

 

So do I, I just can never get enough time to get on this. Paying the bills has been taking a priority lately and doing a video card review doesn't do that. I hope very soon though. This review is a thorn in my side every week.

[pablo scapi]

I can understand that.

 

Maybe you could consider asking for help here, i´m sure there are a lot of people here willing to help out and put hands on such a select bunch of graphic cards. I would offer myself to help if there wasnt a big ocean separating us.

 

Just a thought.