FireGL/Quadro vs. Radeon/GForce

The main difference is the driver pack, alot of optimization for OPENGL work. USually they also come with dual DVI instead of VGA+DVI.

Also they are certified, and thereby if your company has to meet certain industry certification standards, a softmoded gaming card or even a straight gaming card, likely won't meet those requirements, despite being essentially the same thing.

For home use though it would be fine, but since you're doing it for work, best to check first.

Hope that helps.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

I believe there are hacked drivers you can get that will allow your 9600 PRO to be used as a FireGL.

That's all you have to do... install those drivers, and Voila!

________________
<b>Radeon <font color=red>9500 PRO</b></font color=red> <i>(hardmodded 9500, o/c 340/310)</i>
<b>AthlonXP <font color=red>~2750+</b></font color=red> <i>(2400+ @2.2Ghz)</i>
<b>3dMark03: <font color=red>4,055</b>

The 1100 is good, but the 5700 Ultra will be far cheaper, and will offer identical performance if a hacked driver has been made for it.

If price is a factor, and the driver's out there, this might be a good option.

________________
<b>Radeon <font color=red>9500 PRO</b></font color=red> <i>(hardmodded 9500, o/c 340/310)</i>
<b>AthlonXP <font color=red>~2750+</b></font color=red> <i>(2400+ @2.2Ghz)</i>
<b>3dMark03: <font color=red>4,055</b>

What do you mean by more performance? The professional versions of the drivers will give higher performance in cad/3d applications.
Unless you mean in games, where the commercial drivers will sometimes perform speedier than their professioanl counterparts.

Either way, the graphics processors are the exact same hardware, just rebadged and detected as different so they'll use a different driver.

________________
<b>Radeon <font color=red>9500 PRO</b></font color=red> <i>(hardmodded 9500, o/c 340/310)</i>
<b>AthlonXP <font color=red>~2750+</b></font color=red> <i>(2400+ @2.2Ghz)</i>
<b>3dMark03: <font color=red>4,055</b>

I meant gaming cards will give you more performance in games that professional cards will.

I agree that the hardware is essentially identical, but you're paying for extra driver development with the pro cards. In games, there is an acceptable margin for error. That margin is much smaller in the world of CAD. Accuracy is more important than raw speed... but that's not to say that speed doesn't count for something in the world of professional 3D.

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

The Quadro 1100 is not cheap.

It's significantly more expensive than even a FireGLx1-128, let alone a FigreGL Z1 or T2 which are about half it's price.

The best value item would be the Z1 at under $250US (seen them for $199-RETAIL!), and the next cheapest (but not as powerful in some cases) is the T2 @ just under $300US, both blow away the 500 and are reasonable performers. The X1-128 can be found for about $450-499US(retail), whereas the Quadro 1100 is around $650US.

It depends on the application, and in many cases the Quadros will far outperform the FireGLs, but the reverse is true for specific apps. The question is what app and what price point. Money no object, Quadros will be the best performance choice 65+% of the time, but when you bring price into the mix then it changes everything.

<b>Zoron</b>, corruption is NOT unheard of, actually it occurs quite regularly. nV's got notorious AA issues, that are supposedly better with the new NV40 based card (Quadro 4000). And all of the cards show various issues under different applications, 3Dlabs, ATI and nV all have their issues. Here's a few good examples from digit-life;

<A HREF="http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/wc4-7210-vs-qfx3000/index.html" target="_new">Wildcat versus Quadro AA</A>
<A HREF="http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/houdini/houdini-09-2003.html" target="_new">Houdini being rather new caused many issues</A>
<A HREF="http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/profcards/3dlabs-wildcat-vp990pro.html" target="_new">ATI issues with special drivers</A>
And these are just the easy to find ones (heading out of the office, don't have time to grab all of them.

The softmoded drivers have all the same components, as the regular drivers (mainly OGL extensions).

As for the clocking, well as long as they run within specof even the gaming cards, that shouldn't pose a problem, remember alot of the workstation cards while having similar HSF assemblies are as agressive with cooling and power usage.

And really a fater gaming processor running softmoded will do the job better in most cases (as long as memory size is the same).


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

IF you're looking for price performance, then it's hard to beat a softmoded gaming card. You can get near FX2000/FireGL X1-256 power from a $250 card.

Even a regular FX5900 or R9800 will do ok.

Here's a recently updated review including gaming cards;
<A HREF="http://www.3dchips.net/content/review.php?id=63" target="_new">http://www.3dchips.net/content/review.php?id=63</A>

You'll notice that sometimes the R9700Pro beats the other professional cards (except the X2 which is of equivalent raw power), but sometimes is a lesser performer. Look at the Solidworks results and notice that the Xeon/AMD makes a big diff as to which is most effective, although the strength of nV's OGL extensions shows up there too with the QFX500 showing well for a change. Take a look at what you think you need and this should give you an idea.


- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK