Quadro4 on a PIII System

[Neison]

My understanding is that the Quadro4/Geforce4 series only run up to DirectX 8, not 9 -- so most of the cool new features found in Doom III and HL2 will be non-existant on the 980XGL.

If I were you, and I wanted to play future games, I'd just shell out for a lower-end QuadroFX card, which would run future games and let you work with next-gen technology while being approximately the same price as a new 980XGL.

[Aearon]

you would get a substantial speed boost, but would still be extremely bottlenecked by your cpu. i think you should wait a little more. the quadro4's are still damn fine cards if you're on a budget, but maybe you should just wait till you buy the whole upgrade package. you won't get the full advantage of your new card anyway. also the price situation of the dx9 pro cards will have changed a lot by then.

on another note: the whole nvidia dx9 issue is a real dilemma for us quadro people who also want to play the occasional game. real gamers can just go out and buy ati hardware :shrug:

neison is right of course, but a lower-end FX card won't do it if you are serious about playing future games. looking at the scores you might even be better off with your 980 :argh:

[Neison]

Originally posted by fist
a lower-end FX card won't do it if you are serious about playing future games. looking at the scores you might even be better off with your 980 :argh:

True to a point, NVidia is supposedly going to be releasing uber drivers soon, and hopefully they will help out some of the issues in games.

The only unplayable factors of games that I've tried on my M60 were graphic rendering errors, not framerates (the ATIs are faster, but the FXs are playable). Perhaps it's all related and ATI is king of games period, dunno. :shrug:

Or just wait until the next generation of vid cards is out at the beginning of next year ;)

[Aearon]

"ATI is king of games period"

well.. yeah period

still.. you just can't buy ati consumer or fire gl cards for most apps :shrug:

[CgFX]

Originally posted by fist
on another note: the whole nvidia dx9 issue is a real dilemma for us quadro people who also want to play the occasional game. real gamers can just go out and buy ati hardware :shrug:


Have you seen the Doom3 benchmarks at all? The nvidia DX9 hardware is almost 2x faster the ATI DX9 hardware.

[endless]

correct me if I'm wrong, but I could've sworn Doom3 was OpenGL. HalfLife2 is DX9 supposedly, and according to the benchmarks from last week, nv30 isn't holding up too well

edit:
sorry back on topic : the 980 should hold you off for now, although it won't be all that fast in D3 or HL2, but then again, none of the FX's will be either apparently. NV40 perhaps?

[elvis]

Originally posted by CgFX
Have you seen the Doom3 benchmarks at all? The nvidia DX9 hardware is almost 2x faster the ATI DX9 hardware.

doom3 is opengl, not dx9.

don't you love people who pick on your posts for minor definitions? (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=838110#post838110) :p

[CgFX]

Nice try but I was using his terms. It is the same hardware silly. DX vs. OGL... it still runs on the same DX9-class hardware.

Unfortunately for OpenGL fans, DX is driving the industry right now. Case in point is that "DX9-class" or "DX8.1 class" are now common and required terms to describe the level of hardware, even in an OpenGL situation.

"OpenGL 1.5 + SLang + extensions class hardware" doesn't quite roll off the tounge.

[Aearon]

CgFX: "Have you seen the Doom3 benchmarks at all? The nvidia DX9 hardware is almost 2x faster the ATI DX9 hardware."

i have, and i used to think that too. unfortunately it's the exact same situation as with dx9 / HL2.

http://www.anandtech.com/#20532

JC's take on this issue:

"Unfortunately, it will probably be representative of most DX9 games. Doom has a custom back end that uses the lower precisions on the GF-FX, but when you run it with standard fragment programs just like ATI, it is a lot slower. The precision doesn't really matter to Doom, but that won't be a reasonable option in future games designed around DX9 level hardware as a minimum spec. "

elvis: given this evidence, it's obviously not the dx9 api that slows nvidia's current lineup to a crawl, it's dx9 level graphics (full floating point precision to be exact). so the issues are no different with ogl. unfortunate :shrug:

[CgFX]

Yes, the fragment program performance differences are still going to be there but I think the reason that Doom3 is 2x as fast on NVIDIA as it is on ATI is the dedicated shadow-specific culling hardware that NV35 has and that Mr. Carmack is taking advantage of.

Performance gains there will be significant compared to the fragment program delta.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.