Ballistics Report

Performance:

For its intended arena of competition, our gaming cards can't compare. In the Lightwave 3D 5.6 tests that we did, the Oxygen GVX1 is so much faster than even our fastest gaming video cards that its hard to believe our favorite gaming cards could be humbled so. Granted, it's not really an apples to apples comparison, but we need to illustrate performance comparisons somehow. The Oxygen GVX1 is great in OpenGL color rendering, and we became impatient waiting for other cards to finish the same rendering sequences. This is aided by a quite robust OpenGL driver set. The Oxygen GVX1's onboard geometry and lighting acceleration are typically features that are found only on cards costing twice as much.

In gaming performance, though, the Oxygen GVX1 is in a bit more unfamiliar territory. Not intended or built as a gaming card, the performance that we got out of it was expected yet unexpected. On one hand, you expect to see a non-gaming card not perform so hot in gaming benchmarks. On the other hand, though, you figure that the card DOES cost $999, and hope to see insane framerates. That's too bad, but it would've been fun.

Innovation:

This card, although quite a different card then we're used to dealing with, is not as innovative as it seems when cmopared to its peers in the higher-end workstation graphics market. Granted, it is still packed with more new technology than a lot of them. Having the onboard GLINT Gamma G1 processor is certainly a plus. It's like having a miniature CPU onboard the video card. Powerthreads is another interesting technology. It allows for multiple processors to be dynamically load balanced with the GLINT Gamma G1 for the transform and lighting load. However, it has been around the Oxygen line for a while. Virtual textures are a nice new feature. This technology allows the Oxygen to store textures in system memory, and pull whatever textures it needs to be stored in onboard texture memory. However, it pulls only pieces of textures it needs. The inclusion of a software bundle was nice, although the more expensive part of the bundle, which is Soft Engine 4, is applicable to AutoCAD only. Some users may not find any value in this.

Installation and Setup:

The Oxygen GVX1 was not a difficult card to install, although the installation of NT is always so *cough* friendly. Besides the NT setup, the Oxygen GVX1 only required the CD to be inserted in the CD-ROM. After the CD did its auto-run, there is a selection that is "Install Drivers and Manuals". Clicking on that copies the appropriate files over, and also gives you the option at that time to install SSE optimization drivers.

Price:

Performance and technology aside, let's be realistic. This is not a gamer's card, which is obvious. However, for what you get from it, a graphics professional will find value out of the card, from the time that it saves them in the long run. (Those rendering sequences take a LONG time.) In our look at price, however, we have to consider both what the price is relative to performance, but also in terms of ABSOLUTE price. The truth of the matter is that $999 is a LOT of money to spend on one piece of hardware for most people. Not to muddle things up, though, keep in mind that this is one of the first, if not the first card, to be sub-$1000 and have 100% hardware transform and lighting ability. So the price rating is average. On one hand the prices (retail ($999) or street ($739)) are high, but the performance for what you get should justify the cost.