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Old Hand Meets Young Firebrand: ATi FireGL X1 and Nvidia Quadro4 980XGL

06:00 - Thursday 23 January 2003 by Uwe Scheffel

1. Battle Of The Generations
2. Current Workstation Graphics Cards
3. The Boards Close-Up
4. ATi FireGL X1, Continued
5. ATi Driver
6. Nvidia/ PNY Quadro4 980XGL
7. Nvidia Driver
8. Nvidia Driver, Continued
9. Test Configuration
10. Platform And Operating System: A Preliminary Analysis

11. I850/ RDRAM V. E7205/ DDR: The Right Chipset Makes All The Difference
12. AGP8X: One Up On The AGP4X?
13. Benchmarks: Seven Candidates For Testing
14. Viewperf 7.0 Charts
15. Viewperf 7.0 Charts, Continued
16. Solidworks 2001 Plus
17. Solidedge V11
18. 3D Studio Max 4.2
19. Conclusion: Drivers Defeat Hardware
20. Summary Of All Benchmarks

Nvidia is under pressure. Following a long record of easy successes, ATi has suddenly responded with a technologically superior graphics chip. That's because, in the profitable consumer segment, the ATi Radeon 9700 Pro is several lengths ahead of the GeForce4 Ti4600. The superficial reworking of the interface from AGP4x to AGP8x that Nvidia signaled soon after with its "new" NV28 chip revision failed to bridge that gap. But anyone who draws hasty conclusions regarding OpenGL workstations is setting off down a slippery slope. Different rules apply here.

In the spotlight of this test are the PNY/ Nvidia Quadro4 980XGL, based on the NV28 chip, and the ATi FireGL X1, whose driving power is the Radeon/ FireGL 9700 Pro hardware. Before we present the test candidates in detail, here's an overview listing all modern OpenGL graphics cards now available on the market.