Workstation Graphics: AGP Cross Section 2004

The Cards

We are focusing on 3 workstation cards today, and we will also be using 2 ultra high end desktop cards for reference. Here's the lineup of workstation parts that we will be looking at:

AGP Workstation Graphics Contenders
	3Dlabs Wildcat Realizm 200	ATI FireGL X3-256	NVIDIA Quadro FX 4000
Street Price	~$860	~$875	~$1600
Memory Size/Type	512MB GDDR3	256MB GDDR3	256MB GDDR3
Memory Bus	256bit	256bit	256bit
Memory Clock	500MHz	450MHz	500MHz
Core Clock	?	490	375
Vertex Pipes	4	6 (4 Full DX9)	6
Vertex Processing	36-bit	32-bit	32-bit
Pixel Pipes	12	12	16
Pixel Processing	32-bit / 16-bit storage	24-bit	32-bit / 16-bit selectable
Shader Model Support	VS 2.0 / PS 3.0	SM 2.0	SM 3.0
2x Dual-Link DVI	Yes	Yes	Yes
Stereo 3D	Yes	Yes	Yes
Genlock/Framelock	Multiview Upgrade	No	SDI version

Clearly, the competition is well matched, with the exception of price. Of course, we don't know the core clock speed of the 3Dlabs part, but recalling the architectural description, looking at the head-to-head numbers and noting the prices of the parts, the tests should prove to be very interesting. Street prices came from looking at what Google and pricewatch had to offer. Here are the images of the workstation cards that we'll be testing:

3Dlabs' Wildcat Realizm 200 High End AGP Workstation card

ATI's FireGL X3-256 AGP Workstation Card

NVIDIA's Quadro FX 4000 High End AGP Workstation Card

The two consumer level cards against which we chose to compare our workstation parts were the most powerful parts that we could dig up in our lab from the ATI and NVIDIA camp.

It used to be that NVIDIA sold the cheapest workstation components by simply overclocking their desktop part and enabling hardware point and line antialiasing. We can see with the most recent Quadro part that their philosophy has changed quite a bit. Unfortunately, we aren't able to force the GeForce 6 Series to hardware accelerate antialiased wireframe drawing, but the 6800 Ultra Golden Limited (is that name a descriptor or what?) that we received from Prolink does a very solid job of pushing data through. It has a 25MHz higher core clock than the 6800 Ultra and it sports 1.15 GHz data rate GDDR3 memory.

Prolink's GeForce 6800 Ultra Golden Limited

From the ATI camp, we employed the ever faithful HIS. Always the best choice in ATI overclocking, HIS shipped us one of their IceQ II series of parts. We had planned to do a roundup, but unfortunately, they were the only vendor to actually ship us a Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition part. Luckily, the once out-of-work X800 XTPE has recently been re-adopted by ATI in the form of the X850 XT. They may be "different silicon", but to the end user, they are the same part. And so, we're testing with the HIS Radeon X800 XT PE IceQ II both on its legacy as a failed launch product, and as a glimpse at how the X850 XT will run workstation applications (provided ATI actually does get their cards out in January as said they would). Either way, this HIS part is the highest performing ATI based solution that we could dig up to compete with our workstation components.

HIS' Radeon X800 XT PE IceQ II