NVIDIA GF100 & Friends speculation

They should show the full results not just final score. The statement "A Quadro FX 4800 moves up to 10 times faster when running workstation applications than the GeForce GTX 280" is quite inacurate. The shading test fps are usualy close to normal cards. In wireframe tests and antialiasing+wireframe tests the diference betwen quadro and normal cards fps is sometimes over 20-30 times. Also large models are usualy runing faster on quadro cards than normal cards.
If u never turn to wireframe and leave antialiasing alone than there isnt such a drastic difference. (which is the reason why some people state the same performance)

 

"Attempts to use workstation drivers in gaming cards by consumers just to see "if they work" are inevitable because the hardware is only minimally different. Since Nvidia inserts special values into its video BIOSes to prevent dissimulation, such attempts are doomed to failure."

The GPUs are the same. It is the BIOS in the Quadro that turns on specific functions already present in the GPU for workstation apps. This is the reason that some standard GeForce and Radeon cards could be turned into equivalent Quadro and FireGL cards with a simple softmod to trick the driver into believing the card was an actual workstation card:

NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Soft-Mod Guide
Wikipedia FireGL Soft-mod

 

The question isn't whether Quadro has the same perf as Geforce, the point is that if nv wouldn't artificially cripple Geforces in drivers, it *can* perform same as Quadros in pro apps.

 

The person who revived the Nv30-ish "are you ready" campaign had to be the same one who was recently arrested for the airplane bomb hoax.

 

I dont see it as crippling. Some of the things that are covered by the 1k, 1.5k, 2k, 2.5k, 3k up to 5k price tags for Quadros are.

24H exchange for a bad card
Custom drivers on demand
24h driver quick fix
1 on 1 driver team support should it be needed(reason why you can get a custom drivers or quick fix within 24h)

Geforce cards get NONE OF THAT.

Dont know about you, but "IF" I was running a business that needed and used Professional cards, I'd use Professional cards with the price tags to match if that was the kind of support they came with. Specially if MY business depended on the cards working with the apps i used to support the clients I had.

 

/mind blown

 

The premium is for both the support and the perf unlocked by drivers. The high quality of support nv appears to offer for Quadros still doesn't change the fact that nv cripples Geforce perf in certain apps in drivers.

 

Now I can see why so many ppl in AMD were dead set against building a medium range GPU during the rv770 design process.

 

It has nothing to do with the size. It's the performance of the chip/card. 5870 is only 50% (4xMSAA/8xMSAA+16xAF) faster than the 4890 and 30% (4xMSAA+16xAF) faster than the gtx285. I will laugh when GF100 is not faster than 30%.

 

I thought a GTX285 and the 4890 were about the same give or take a few fps here and there. Your quote would imply that a GTX285 is 20 % faster.

 

I think if u have a problem with a 7.5K dolar basic license software u contact them first what is the problem not the nvidia driver team. Or the 24h exchange, if it would run on normal cards u could exchange them in less than 3 ours from every pc hardware shop. On the other hand the quadro cards are rare as hell and u wont find them anywhere.

Those pro cards are just rip-off for easy money. Do you think that profesional software vendors care about nvidia or ati profesional cards lineup. They code them for APIs not cards. The quadro cards just use this for easy money.
But of course its entirely on nvidia or ati what will they do with their property and that they will make a pro lineup just with driver differences.

 

It depends on the games and settings: http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/...009/18/#abschnitt_performancerating_qualitaet
(They add the two DX11 games Battleforge and Stalker to the rating but not Batman with Physx!).
It would be really funny to see how GF100 is not really faster than a GTX285 with the 3,1 billions of transistors.

 

Well, no, it's just that they don't enable certain features in GeForce drivers that are only used in workstation apps, such as dedicated line anti-aliasing.

This actually makes extremely good sense, as it would be quite ridiculous to maintain parts of the driver in the GeForce line that are never used, and even worse for bugs in those parts of the driver to cause problems with games. Better to just disable the features and be done with it.

 

esp when you can take the same card add a few hundred or more to the price tag and those drivers with the features and market it towards the work station section

 

The Quadro product consists of the chip and all the software that goes along with it. The Geforce product doesn't come with that software and hence is cheaper. It's really not that complicated.

 

Wow,

According to this link the GF100 can be 40% faster than GtX285 and still be sllower than HD5870 and even GtX295. However, even if it's 50-60% faster than GtX285 and just barely beating HD5870 with a 60% larger chip, this would probably be considered a disappointment by many, including the people who made the chip.

I'm just a lurker but this kind of "fast is what I say is fast" arguments can not really be called specaulation, can they?

 

If you think quadro has so much to do with the large die size of something like GT200, that's your problem. The reality is that GT200 was big because Nvidia needed all the alus they could get. Also their architecture while fairly computationally efficient does not make for area efficient ALUs. Historically, the Geforce line has been more than profitable on its own. The only change is a massive change in strategy by their main competitor and under performance by Nvidia. In summery, even without quadro, Nvidia would be designing large die sizes as that has been their strategy for their primary market for quite some time.

 

What parts of this conversation are you having trouble understanding? We've already stated that Nvidia purposely cripples the Geforce cards in various ways for OpenGL rendering. Think of it as the reverse of the normal way things work with games software: if unreal then use unreal_fast path => if not Id_game then use OpenGL slow path!

The hardware is either exactly the same or BETTER on the Geforce side than on the quadro side, the comparison you linked is basically comparing a Geforce 280 to a Quadro 260. The only reason the Quadro has better performance is because Nvidia is purposely crippling the 280.

 

Emphasis mine. This remains to be seen.