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Part 2: 2D, Acceleration, And Windows: Aren't All Graphics Cards Equal?

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Tom2D: Polygons

Next up, drawing polygons. Here, too, various test candidates demonstrate interesting weaknesses.

Polygon benchmark

Test Content:

For this test, we draw a total of 60,000 polygons with anywhere from 3 to 30 vertices, various line weights, and either color-filled or empty in some randomly chosen position on screen. As with our other tests, the random number generator seed remains constant so all test runs produce the same results. All objects appear entirely within the display area, so no clipping is necessary.

GDI Functions Called

Direct drawing test for polygons:

CreatePenCreateSolidBrushGetStockObjectSelectObjectDeleteObjectPolygon

Polygons drawn from the DIB buffer:

CreateCompatibleDCCreateDIBSectionRectangleBitBlt

Summary

When polygons get buffered, performance is the same whether Aero is turned on or off. For direct draw operations, the high-end graphics cards fall way behind the pack. We have to wonder what might be bottlenecking ATI's cards. Similarly, why is Nvidia's GeForce GTX 285 suffering from freezes and delays when rendering polygons? And why is it falling behind Intel's GMA 950/Atom combination and the older G45-based integrated core logic?

121 Comments Comment from the forums
  • mdm08 16 February 2010 14:01
    I have a 5850 with 10.1 drivers and it seems Photoshop CS4 doesn't recognize it as a graphics card that can improve performance so all those cool new features like animated zoom, kinetic panning, and such seem to be disabled. Also, it when you have a very complex group of objects and you try to nudge it ( move it one pixel with arrow keys) the computer actually shows the spinning wheel and has to process this instead of being instantaneous like it was on my older 7600GT. Is this an issue related with what this article is saying about apps written for GDI or is this a different issue i'm experiencing?
    Reply
  • jrharbort 16 February 2010 14:03
    Scores on 9600M GT and T9600 Core 2 Duo with Windows XP and latest graphics drivers. Only 11 active background processes no including benchmark, and themes disabled.

    BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

    Text: 8556 chars/sec
    Line: 47513 lines/sec
    Polygon: 7757 polygons/sec
    Rectangle: 6564 rects/sec
    Arc/Ellipse: 3874 ellipses/sec
    Blitting: 13974 operations/sec
    Stretching: 266 operations/sec
    Splines/Bézier: 10510 splines/sec
    Score: 984
    Reply
  • 16 February 2010 14:45
    It would be great if you can run the test on some "pro" cards (quadroFX, quadroNVS, firePro & fireMV). Just to see if the "pro" drivers change standard UI rendering or the optimizations are only for the professional DCC software.
    Reply
  • liquidsnake718 16 February 2010 15:02
    mdm08I have a 5850 with 10.1 drivers and it seems Photoshop CS4 doesn't recognize it as a graphics card that can improve performance so all those cool new features like animated zoom, kinetic panning, and such seem to be disabled. Also, it when you have a very complex group of objects and you try to nudge it ( move it one pixel with arrow keys) the computer actually shows the spinning wheel and has to process this instead of being instantaneous like it was on my older 7600GT. Is this an issue related with what this article is saying about apps written for GDI or is this a different issue i'm experiencing?Oh great, more news on a 5xxx series not being able to handle simple apps like CS4.... I have yet to use CS4 on my desktop with my 5850..... I hope Ati comes out with more patches if this is a problem.
    Reply
  • taltamir 16 February 2010 15:25
    windows XP is dead... get on the windows 7 64bit bandwagon already you Luddites! (not referring to the authors of the article, they raise good points; I am referring to those customers who insist that XP is some sort of holy grail of windows bliss never seen before or after)
    Reply
  • 16 February 2010 15:48
    Scores on P4 2.8 HT Northwood W ati 2600 pro drivers 10.1 aero Win 7 :
    BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

    Text: 8106 chars/sec
    Line: 6528 lines/sec
    Polygon: 249 polygons/sec
    Rectangle: 1484 rects/sec
    Arc/Ellipse: 6127 ellipses/sec
    Blitting: 379 operations/sec
    Stretching: 80 operations/sec
    Splines/Bézier: 5263 splines/sec
    Score: 362
    Reply
  • 16 February 2010 15:55
    Scores on P4 2.8 HT Northwood W ati 2600 pro drivers 10.1 aero Win 7 :

    BENCHMARK: DIB-BUFFER AND BLIT

    Text: 12633 chars/sec
    Line: 21067 lines/sec
    Polygon: 4087 polygons/sec
    Rectangle: 535 rects/sec
    Arc/Ellipse: 5604 ellipses/sec
    Blitting: 1443 operations/sec
    Stretching: 213 operations/sec
    Splines/Bézier: 12213 splines/sec
    Score: 607
    Reply
  • giovanni86 16 February 2010 15:58
    BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

    Text: 54466 chars/sec
    Line: 73135 lines/sec
    Polygon: 23943 polygons/sec
    Rectangle: 3927 rects/sec
    Arc/Ellipse: 26911 ellipses/sec
    Blitting: 9827 operations/sec
    Stretching: 464 operations/sec
    Splines/Bézier: 41911 splines/sec
    Score: 2600
    Reply
  • helle040 16 February 2010 16:10
    Rdaeon 4670, amd 7750be, winxp, drivers 10.1, resolutie 1280x1024, 32bit
    Text: 45746
    line: 40508
    Splines/beziers: 20466
    Poygon: 322
    Rectangle: 1954
    Arc/E.: 3494
    Biting: 2406
    Stretching: 211
    Score: 1150
    Reply
  • wxj 16 February 2010 16:20
    I’ve always preferred GDI operations over those of the NOD. GDI have more basic operations set verses NOD’s more complex and sometimes unreliable operations.
    Reply