video cards: workstation vs. gamer class

[Kevin Fishburne]

This is in reference to the post:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp...o/browse_thread/thread/8c17a725df1ec88f?hl=en

It appears that there are no cutting edge video cards that use 512 MB
RAM and are AGP 8x, and very few that exist using PCIe or PCIe 16x. I
have discovered that cards seeming to meet these requirements exist but
are described as "workstation class" cards. These are cards used by
professionals, often using 3dsmax, AutoCAD, etc., and are significantly
more expensive than ATI or nVIDIA's usual fare.

My questions is how would a "workstation class" card perform running
normal games vs. a "gamer class" card? Would a 3D Labs Wildcat VP 990
PRO run Doom 3 and Far Cry better or worse than cheaper gamer class
cards? Here are the stats on the card in case anyone's interested:

Evolutionary Wildcat VP Visual Processing Unit (VPU)
# Over 200 32-bit processors dedicated to graphics processing
# 256-bit DDR memory interface, 200 Gflops, and 1.2 TeraOps of
processing power to enhance speed and performance
# Dual 370 MHz, 10-bit RAMDACs for flawless color and quality display

High-Level Programming Architecture
# High-Level Programming Architecture is programmable for future CAD
and DCC application advancements following evolving industry standards

Geometry Processing
# 16 dedicated 32-bit floating-point geometry processors
# Flexible surface and vertex processing
# 16 lights accelerated in hardware
# 32-bit Z-buffer minimizes the annoying flicker of triangle
transposition

Texture Processing
# 128 dedicated 32-bit floating-point texture processors
# Up to eight, simultaneous textures in a single pass
# Programmable texture formats and filters for maximum texture
flexibility

Pixel Processing
# 64 dedicated 32-bit integer pixel processors
# Programmable antialiasing supporting a wide range of antialiasing
options
# Up to eight multi-samples in a single pass
# Programmable image processing and compositing

Virtual Memory Architecture
# Memory stored as L2 cache for faster access to frequently used data
# Seamless handling of large datasets - even when they exceed the card
memory limits
# Designed for optimal buffer download performance
# Automatically pages out unused buffers for maximum efficiency

 

[gimp]

Would a 3D Labs Wildcat VP 990
PRO run Doom 3 and Far Cry better or worse than cheaper gamer class
cards?

worse. in fact that Wildcat series can be problematic as hell with
DirectX. even 'workstation' nVidia quadro cards are usually slower in
games than their consumer-class GeForce counterparts. a good number of
3D professionals use GeForce cards which offer the same speed in 3D
applications at less than half the price.

 

[Kevin Fishburne]

Interesting. I wonder in what ways they're superior other than in
memory management to justify such high prices. Do you know of any
blazingly fast AGP 8x cards with 512 MB of RAM? If a card has the
ability to use system RAM in place but completely transparent to the
software, that would suffice but I haven't seen that yet.

 

[Christian Klassen]

Interesting. I wonder in what ways they're superior other than in
memory management to justify such high prices. Do you know of any
blazingly fast AGP 8x cards with 512 MB of RAM? If a card has the
ability to use system RAM in place but completely transparent to the
software, that would suffice but I haven't seen that yet.

I think it's doubtful, whether there will be 512 MByte consumer market
cards for the AGP interface.

The rationalization for this is that the retail market for graphics cards
is much smaller than the OEM market (that sells new PCs), and that the OEMs
focus on a unified PCI-E interface for graphics cards to save costs.

And chances are that even a good part of the (rather small, another factor)
high-end retail market (to which those 512 MByte cards belong) - those who
regularly upgrade to the latest and greatest - will already own a PCI-E
mainboard, so it's unsure whether an AGP version would pay for itself.

BTW, IIRC the high end cards of ATI's latest generation (Radeon X1800 XT or
some such) come in 512 MByte flavors - but PCI-E only, I fear.

 

[Dan Wojciechowski]

Interesting. I wonder in what ways they're superior other than in
memory management to justify such high prices. Do you know of any

Kevin:

My understanding is that the difference between "gamer" video cards
and "work station" video cards is one of optimization for a particular
intent.

Historically, game designs have used relatively few polygons (triangles)
and relatively many textures to achieve their effect. In contrast, most
"work station" applications make use of large numbers of polygons and
relatively few textures. So, game cards have developed focusing on
maximizing the application of many textures to a small number of
polygons. The "professional" cards can render far, far more polygons
more quickly, but their texture handling capability is both limited and
slow compared to the game counterparts.

Essentially, its a case of "different strokes for different folks".

blazingly fast AGP 8x cards with 512 MB of RAM? If a card has the
ability to use system RAM in place but completely transparent to the
software, that would suffice but I haven't seen that yet.

Well, one of the intents of AGP was to allow the video card to access
system memory for use as video memory. Is that what you mean?
In practice, this has never really materialized because main memory
access has always been so much slower than the dedicated video
RAM, that the performance hit was too extreme. I believe that AGP
was conceived in the days of 4 and 8 meg video cards, when the
thought was that hundreds of megabytes of video memory would
never be cheap enough for mainstream video cards. }


--
Dan (Woj...) [dmaster](no space)[at](no space)[lucent](no space)[dot](no
space)[com]
===============================
"When I was a child / I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye. / I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now / The child is grown,
The dream is gone. / I have become comfortably numb."

 

[Kevin Fishburne]

I have to agree with you Christian and Dan, that makes a lot of sense.

Dan said:

Well, one of the intents of AGP was to allow the video card to access
system memory for use as video memory. Is that what you mean?

Sorta. I had a problem with the Sandbox editor for Far Cry where it
would attempt to allocate 128 MB of video RAM, which my card has, but
the allocation slightly exceeded this amount. Paging into system RAM
wasn't transparent to the editor, which promptly died in error. It
sounded like the Wildcat could circumvent a problem like this.

Fortunately I believe I've found the solution to my problem. I found a
motherboard that is socket 478 and takes DDR 400 (PC 3200) RAM like my
current motherboard. It has integrated digital audio, NIC, and RAID 0-1
controller with 4 SATA 150 ports. So for $100 I can keep my RAM, RAID
config, and CPU, and yet this new board has 1 PCIe x16, 2 PCIe, and 3
PCI slots. For those interested the make is Albatron and the model is
PX915P4C Pro:
http://www.albatron.com.tw/english/it/mb/specification.asp?pro_id=160

As far as the video card goes, I've been doing a lot of research and
have found the card. Good call Christian. The Sapphire Radeon X1800 XT
is coming out November 5th of this year. It's PCIe x16, has 512 MB of
RAM, and has been tested as the fastet card [soon to be] on the market.
$550 isn't a terrible price for the glory, either. Thanks all for the
information, I appreciate it.