Quadro Performance

Performance numbers

The following graphs were released by Nvidia comparing the Quadro to such industry leaders as the SGI Infinite Reality, 3Dlabs Oxygen GVX-1, and Intergraph Wildcat 4000.

Indy3D MCAD Test'	Viewperf Advanced Visualizer Test
Indy3D Animation Test	Pro/Engineer G Bench99 Test

If the benchmarks aren't wholly familiar, don't feel bad. They're high-end tests designed to stress particular aspects of 3D which doesn't generally concern gaming. Here's a brief run-down. Indy3D MCAD is a CAD dataset that manipulates, rotates, and transforms high-polygon models, mimicking what a CAD engineer might to in a standard session. We don't have information on the specifics of the testing parameters (again you're bound to get a little of that in company press releases), and the Wildcat is conspicuously missing from these benchmarks.

The Viewperf AWADVS is a test for Alias|Wavefront's Advanced Visualizer, a 3d animation and modeling package. The results are a compilation of 6 individual tests in the suite, and in particular measure fill rates and line-drawing capabilities. Indy3D animation measures the performance of animation playback. It stresses might fillrate and memory throughput over polygon count, and here you can see the game-centric, real-time nature particular to gaming-derivative cards such as the Quadro spring into action. The ProE Gbench is a test for Pro Engineer, a high end CAD program. Like MCAD, it simulates general usage of the application by playing back a trail file of a recorded user session.

But how does it fare in Quake??

Well, according to Derek, the Quadro will actually outperform an equivalently spec'ed GeForce 256 board at any given 3D game, which makes sense based on the higher clock speed of the graphics core. The workstation-specific enhancements for Quadro won't make a difference in most general 3D apps or games, and whether they'll be implemented as a side-benefit depends on how much volume is shipped.

For high end applications, Nvidia touts the Quadro to be anywhere from 2 to 4 times faster than an equivalent GeForce. I suspect however that this is taking into account all of the subtle hardware-accelerated features of Quadro that are not implemented on GeForce, such as using anti-aliased lines and wireframes, 2-sided lighting, and shared back-buffering. With these features turned off, the benefit of Quadro would merely be in its additional 10MHz core.