Professional Affair: OpenGL Graphics Cards Compete

3D Studio Max 3.1 R3 Benchmark, Continued

This benchmark tests the accelerated lighting capabilities of the graphics card. It uses 8 Omni light sources.

We discovered an interesting effect here. Theoretically the Quadro should have won the test. After all it is equipped with a powerful Transform & Lighting unit. But the Fire GL 1 Pro tricks the chip. This card does not even have any hardware acceleration for light sources, requiring the CPU to do the calculations. But with intelligent driver programming Diamond takes advantage of the SSE of the Pentium III and 3DNow! of the Athlon, respectively, and outmaneuvers the Gloria II.

In this benchmark 3D Studio Max displays four viewports simultaneously. The objects are visible from four camera positions at the same time. Again, Elsa's MAXTREME driver does the best job and leaves all other test candidates far behind. Especially the Lightning 1200 and Fire GL 1 show a very poor rendering performance is this scenario.