Theres good news for DCC/CAD professionals on a budget. As we all know the new FireGL series has wiped the floor in most professional benchmarks and won almost every editor's choice award. It is reigning supreme in the professional segment right now. But these graphic cards still cost quite a lot.
FireGL V5600 costs $600. No big deal, if you have good budget. But what about the people who are on a tight budget? Do they have to settle for the gaming cards like Radeons and Geforces which cant push profesional graphics all that well and moreover suffer from weird viewport gliches. Nope sir
Now you can soft mod the humble 100$ "ATI HD 2600XT" to "ATI FireGL V5600". Its possible because they both have the same core hardware.
Check out the mod (Thanks to the chinese whiz who released the modded drivers :hap2: ).
My ATI HD2600XT before soft modding:
After softmodding magically transforms to ATI FireGL V5600
That apart lets check out the results.
I benched the ATI HD 2600XT before and after mods at home with C2D E6750.
Benched Quadro FX1500 at work on E6400.
The quadro FX4600 and the original FireGL V5600 results I took from 3dprofessor as they were tested with similar CPU(C2d E6700) albeit with good 4GB perfomance RAM.
Lets see how my modded beauty fares
SPECviewperf 10
I dont think Quadro FX1500 is much of a competition to my 100$ modded beauty. Il spare it the humiliation in further tests
Notice theres a 10% perf difference btw the softmodded FireGL and the original one. Maybe because of the following factors:
1. I used DDR3 HD 2600XT.
2. The FireGL V5600 has 512MB RAM.
3. Faster memory they say.
4. Any mild inequality factors existing in systems.
Theres something to be considered. FireGLV5600 is in the entry-mid segment whereas Quadro FX4600 is in the ultra high end segment costing 3 times as much :rofl:
I had posted real world Maya results in a different thread, but they were on different specs/versions/res and so not a true comparuson. This time I have kept all equal.
C2D E6750
2GB DDR2 800
Maya 8.5
1280x1024
Real world Maya Benchmarks:
Keep in mind these are real scenarios. This is close to what you can expect in your production scenes. These tests are not synthetic.
Werewolf and hand are good geometry pushing scenes with good character textures.
Insect tries to guage the perfomance in an animation production scenario.
Squid is basically a test that tests some mild shader perfomance with lot of file testures and this is the test that I regard the least.
Some notes that I made from this:
1. 8600GT is simply not recomended for professional work in Maya, not just because of the lowest frame rates among the cards tested, but mainly because of weird viewport glitches and crashes.
2. ATI HD 2600XT is a good card for professional graphics. I dare say that it can beat the 1900XT. I have not tested the 1900XT, its just my gut feeling seeing how well the new architecture has imposed itself in the DCC/CAD segment. Ofcourse upon soft modding it is a giant killer and can compete with Quadro FX4600. It has showed itself to be a stable solution in the limited period I tested.
3. The Quadro FX1500 gets beaten thoroughly by soft FireGL V5600. But please note that a true test of a professional card will be in a production scenario and the quadro is a proven card.
4. Again I dare say that these results can be taken as a guage for 3ds Max perfomance.
Note: Things are not as simple as "fps" in real world production.
Verdict: Succesfully procured a 100$ workstation monster card that is able to lock horns with the mighty Quadro FX 4600.
Case closed!
FireGL V5600 costs $600. No big deal, if you have good budget. But what about the people who are on a tight budget? Do they have to settle for the gaming cards like Radeons and Geforces which cant push profesional graphics all that well and moreover suffer from weird viewport gliches. Nope sir
Now you can soft mod the humble 100$ "ATI HD 2600XT" to "ATI FireGL V5600". Its possible because they both have the same core hardware. Check out the mod (Thanks to the chinese whiz who released the modded drivers :hap2: ).
My ATI HD2600XT before soft modding:
After softmodding magically transforms to ATI FireGL V5600
That apart lets check out the results.
I benched the ATI HD 2600XT before and after mods at home with C2D E6750.
Benched Quadro FX1500 at work on E6400.
The quadro FX4600 and the original FireGL V5600 results I took from 3dprofessor as they were tested with similar CPU(C2d E6700) albeit with good 4GB perfomance RAM.
Lets see how my modded beauty fares
SPECviewperf 10
I dont think Quadro FX1500 is much of a competition to my 100$ modded beauty. Il spare it the humiliation in further tests
Notice theres a 10% perf difference btw the softmodded FireGL and the original one. Maybe because of the following factors:
1. I used DDR3 HD 2600XT.
2. The FireGL V5600 has 512MB RAM.
3. Faster memory they say.
4. Any mild inequality factors existing in systems.
Theres something to be considered. FireGLV5600 is in the entry-mid segment whereas Quadro FX4600 is in the ultra high end segment costing 3 times as much :rofl:
I had posted real world Maya results in a different thread, but they were on different specs/versions/res and so not a true comparuson. This time I have kept all equal.
C2D E6750
2GB DDR2 800
Maya 8.5
1280x1024
Real world Maya Benchmarks:
Keep in mind these are real scenarios. This is close to what you can expect in your production scenes. These tests are not synthetic.
Werewolf and hand are good geometry pushing scenes with good character textures.
Insect tries to guage the perfomance in an animation production scenario.
Squid is basically a test that tests some mild shader perfomance with lot of file testures and this is the test that I regard the least.
Some notes that I made from this:
1. 8600GT is simply not recomended for professional work in Maya, not just because of the lowest frame rates among the cards tested, but mainly because of weird viewport glitches and crashes.
2. ATI HD 2600XT is a good card for professional graphics. I dare say that it can beat the 1900XT. I have not tested the 1900XT, its just my gut feeling seeing how well the new architecture has imposed itself in the DCC/CAD segment. Ofcourse upon soft modding it is a giant killer and can compete with Quadro FX4600. It has showed itself to be a stable solution in the limited period I tested.
3. The Quadro FX1500 gets beaten thoroughly by soft FireGL V5600. But please note that a true test of a professional card will be in a production scenario and the quadro is a proven card.
4. Again I dare say that these results can be taken as a guage for 3ds Max perfomance.
Note: Things are not as simple as "fps" in real world production.
Verdict: Succesfully procured a 100$ workstation monster card that is able to lock horns with the mighty Quadro FX 4600.
Case closed!
