May
26, 2000 -
By John
"Tool" Fiegener
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Head-to-Head
Versus The Competition |
The
Gloria II Rules |
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SPEC Solidworks Benchmark 98
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I
chose to run only the graphics portion of
the Spec Solidworks Benchmark to eliminate
any performance variables based on the CPU.
Click
image for full view
|
Click
image for full view
The Gloria II clearly dominates on the
Solidworks test as well as out performing
the GVX1 and the GMX easily. I have yet to
see an impact from the GMX that would
justify the additional cost. When you look
at GVX1, the GMX pails in comparison,
especially when you add in the cost factor.
The Gloria II excels at shaded display and
rotation. If you're like me and shaded
rotation is key, then the Gloria II is the
card of choice. I noticed flawless rotation
even at the highest detail setting in
Solidworks and a shade level of 10 in Pro/E.
The Gloria II has yet to meet its match.
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SPEC
Viewperf 6.1
SPEC's
Viewperf is a series of tests using segments
of the actual application. The test performs
sub routines of each application then
calculates a benchmark based on the
performance of the CPU, video card and the
weight of the individual test. The four test
perfomed are DesignReview Viewset
(DRV-06, Data Explorer (DX-05),
Advanced Visualizer (AWadvs-03),
Lightscape-03 and Pro/CDRS.
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Here are the
results... |
Once again
the Gloria II was clearly superior,
especially in the Awadvs (Visualizer) test.
The Gloria II was almost 50 percent faster
than the GVX1 in the Pro/CDRS category,
which is good news to me as this is an
application I favor. It is clear that the
Gloria II benefits from the ability to
process 50 Gflops compared to the meager 3
of the GVX1 and GMX 2000. Even with 96 Megs
of memory, the GMX performs badly compared
to the Goria II or GVX1.
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The Quadro is
an amazing breath of fresh air to the
professional video card circuit. To see a
card appear from the gaming market that
clearly has shaken the big
"professional card vendors" can
only be better for the industry. Elsa's
Gloria II is and outstanding card for MCAD
applications and delivers the greatest
performance for the dollar. It would be
interesting to see how the Quadro compares
to the GeForce DDR with 64 megs. If that
GeForce can perform at 75% the capacity of
the Quadro for 1/3 the price than there
really would be no line between the
professional video cards and gaming cards.
The Elsa
Gloria II Quadro is a dynamite addition to
the professional video card market. It will
be interesting to see the flow of new
products from the established vendors in
this arena to compete with Quadro. The
Quadro deserves a stellar 9 on the heat
meter only shy from a perfect score because
I could see little difference between the
Quadro and the GeForce DDR 64 except the
price.
We're giving
the Elsa Gloria II a HotHardware Heat Meter
Rating of...
|
John
"Tool" Fiegener |
tool.
Product Design and Development
Don't
just sit there!
Get
into the HotHardware Conference Room and
talk about this article! |