7800 gtx vs. nvidia quadro 1400

S

skinnypotbelly

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 14, 2005
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Which would be better for use in a workstation? I know the quadro is meant to be used CAD and rendering; but it seems like the 7800 gtx is overall just a more powerful card. I'm building a workstation for my brother and he definitely will not be playing any games.
 
Well if he does not need a card for CAD/rendering/similar, then I go with the 7800gtx.
 
You said what he wont be doing..

What is he going to do?

At what capacity do you need a workstation for?
 
He'll mostly be doing photoshop, but he may do some CAD/rendering. Basically I have a spare 7800 gtx that I can give him or I can get a quadro fx 1400 for 170. I'm wondering if the 1400 would be worth it since I already have the 7800 gtx.
 
Yeah, I saw those 1400's. Hmmm....cant slap it all together real quick and see if the GTX will do it? Would be a drag to waste $170
 
If you already have a 7800GTX, why dont you just test it on the machine before you go and buy a Quadro 1400 and see if it is what you want. It wouldn't hurt, jsut see if he likes it and does what he needs.
 
I won't have time to put it together until the end of this month. Plus I'm still missing a few parts.
 
A Geforce 7800 GTX versus a Quadro FX1400? :eek:

You do realize that the 7800 is the same exact hardware as the FX4500, right? The FX1400 is the same hardware as the... what? Geforce 6600?

Sure, the Quadro FX line has drivers that are "more optimized for pro users" or some bullshit like that, and they support a few features that the "gaming" cards do not (like anti-aliased line drawing). But NOTHING the FX1400 offers can stand against the sheer power of the 7800 GTX. Anti-aliased line drawing, for example, is useful because it lets you selectively anti-alias just the lines. Well, the 7800 can run with full-screen anti-aliasing and offer better performance than the FX1400 does with anti-aliasing on just the lines. Guess which mode looks better!



Not that it really matters, though. Photoshop doesn't use the GPU, and neither does rendering (other than in games/3D viewports; final rendering is mostly done on the CPU).
 
Get the 7800GTX, softmod the drivers so it's seen as the Quadro, get about 95% of the performance of the Quadro for a helluvalot less money. Simple.

I just did this (well, not this exactly but...) with the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 128MB card/chip inside my 20" iMac. Under Windows, it's now seen as a FireGL v5200 card and the SPECViewperf and Cinebench scores doubled across the board. I did this years ago with an Nvidia FX5900 card - did a softmod on the drivers, it turned into a Quadro FX3000 and saved me $1500.

Just suggestions, YMMV...
 
go w/ the 7800.

granted if you were doing mission critical work in auto cad where accuracy matters id say go w/ the quadro.

if your doing photoshop where rendering speed is more important i say go w/ brute force and the 7800.
 
geekcomputing said:
granted if you were doing mission critical work in auto cad where accuracy matters id say go w/ the quadro.
Click to expand...
Accuracy in Autocad (and other such apps) is achieved thanks to CPU-based code, not GPU-based.
 
difference between pro and regular cards

specviewperf 9.0

x1900xt

---------- SUM_RESULTS\3DSMAX\SUMMARY.TXT
3dsmax-04 Weighted Geometric Mean = 9.719

---------- SUM_RESULTS\CATIA\SUMMARY.TXT
catia-02 Weighted Geometric Mean = 11.05

---------- SUM_RESULTS\ENSIGHT\SUMMARY.TXT
ensight-03 Weighted Geometric Mean = 10.93

---------- SUM_RESULTS\LIGHT\SUMMARY.TXT
light-08 Weighted Geometric Mean = 10.01

---------- SUM_RESULTS\MAYA\SUMMARY.TXT
maya-02 Weighted Geometric Mean = 12.91

---------- SUM_RESULTS\PROE\SUMMARY.TXT
proe-04 Weighted Geometric Mean = 6.771

---------- SUM_RESULTS\SW\SUMMARY.TXT
sw-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 13.57

---------- SUM_RESULTS\UGNX\SUMMARY.TXT
ugnx-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 6.103

---------- SUM_RESULTS\TCVIS\SUMMARY.TXT
tcvis-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 3.221



softmodded to unlock professional features using fireGL drivers

---------- SUM_RESULTS\3DSMAX\SUMMARY.TXT
3dsmax-04 Weighted Geometric Mean = 18.60

---------- SUM_RESULTS\CATIA\SUMMARY.TXT
catia-02 Weighted Geometric Mean = 25.18

---------- SUM_RESULTS\ENSIGHT\SUMMARY.TXT
ensight-03 Weighted Geometric Mean = 18.97

---------- SUM_RESULTS\LIGHT\SUMMARY.TXT
light-08 Weighted Geometric Mean = 22.16

---------- SUM_RESULTS\MAYA\SUMMARY.TXT
maya-02 Weighted Geometric Mean = 67.45

---------- SUM_RESULTS\PROE\SUMMARY.TXT
proe-04 Weighted Geometric Mean = 20.81

---------- SUM_RESULTS\SW\SUMMARY.TXT
sw-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 36.47

---------- SUM_RESULTS\UGNX\SUMMARY.TXT
ugnx-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 15.84

---------- SUM_RESULTS\TCVIS\SUMMARY.TXT
tcvis-01 Weighted Geometric Mean = 9.201

When working with these apps the difference is night and day between ANY Quadro (even one based on 5900 core) and Geforce card, I'd pick the quadro. Autocad might be a different story but somehow I don't think it will be...
 
Those results just confirm the sort of performance boost I just talked about. Companies like ATI and Nvidia charge absolutely ridiculous amounts of money for the "high end pro workstation graphics cards" they make - the FireGL line and the Quadro line, respectively - not because the hardware is so much better than normal consumer cards; it's not, as softmodding proves. The high end cards are the low end consumer cards 99% of the way, it's just a feature or two that the low end cards typically have disabled in the BIOS on the cards or, as everyone has discovered, the drivers simply don't enable the feature sets of the high end cards.

Softmodding gives you the performance of the high end, the cost of the low end, and the only thing you're missing out on is the customer support they (ATI and Nvidia) provide for the ridiculously outrageous price of the high end cards.

If you're a company doing high end 3D production work, that stuff is your living so I can understand paying a high fee for the hardware knowing that if you have issues with it you can pick up a phone and speak to someone about it and expect the issue to be resolved quickly and efficiently.

So, again, if you're doing 3D work as a hobby or pasttime thing, get the low end card, softmod the drivers, and get the performance of the Quadro line for 1/8 the cost (most of the time). Spend the money on the ridiculously priced high end 3D software instead.

:D :D
 
As far as I know, the ONLY difference, hardware-wise, between Quadros/FireGLs and Geforces/Radeons, is that the former generally have larger ROM chips. Which means that the Mac version, at least back in the PPC days, of your typical Radeon is actually the same exact hardware as the FireGL equivalent. Old Mac Radeons/Geforces also have larger ROM chips. This, in turns, means you can softmod a PC FireGL/Quadro into a Mac Radeon/Geforce. With most cards, you have to physically replace the ROM chip if you want to make a PC gamer card work in a Mac.

At least this is how it worked in the PPC days. These days, with EFI and all, I don't know how it works.

But enough about that.



When it comes to performance, I'd like to hear from a non-SPEC source. Does anyone here use 3dsmax on a regular basis, with both "pro" and "gamer" level cards? SPEC viewperf is great and everything, but you cannot assume that it is entirely truthful until you've gotten second opinions.
 
Maya is just amazing using a softmodded X1900XT compared to a regular one, one can just work with high poly scenes and the fps is still very smooth whereas an X1900XT simply chokes, it is very stable as well. Of course a Quadro is better for Maya but FireGL is no slouch. Best thing is there is a very low penalty for using smooth wireframes so everything is real nice and neat.
 
uniwarp said:
Maya is just amazing using a softmodded X1900XT compared to a regular one, one can just work with high poly scenes and the fps is still very smooth whereas an X1900XT simply chokes, it is very stable as well. Of course a Quadro is better for Maya but FireGL is no slouch. Best thing is there is a very low penalty for using smooth wireframes so everything is real nice and neat.
Click to expand...
In other words, the "gamer" drivers are downright crippled...
 
That and I also think the software vendors are also making no effort to support regular drivers. I don't bother with 3DS Max drivers for my softmodded X1900XT but Max is also quite fast in DX mode. If other vendors were to follow this nvidia/ati wouldn't be able to sell so many quadro/firegl products imho because most pro apps act as if there is no 3d acceleration at all. When running specviewperf I noticed that the graphics card didn't heat up one bit and that struck me as kind of strange, it's like the gpu hardly was put to work.
 
I'm using a 6800GT AGP softmodded to a quadro 4000, and it will smoke any consumer level PCI-e card on the planet in professional apps like Pro-E, maya, and 3dsMAX.
HERE is a link to an Nvidia document that explains alot of the very real and substantial differences between the quadro and geforce cards. Pay particular attention to the clip region, hardware accelerated clip plane, and two sided lighting sections. These are not features you will get on standard "gamer cards" without modding- and if you use these apps for any length of time, you will notice (and hate) when they are missing.

I've got a laptop with a 7800GTX that cannot be softmodded, and I'll take my 6800GT-quadro4000 over it any day. More info Here
 
Black Morty Rackham said:
In other words, the "gamer" drivers are downright crippled...
Click to expand...


unfortunately it seems so. it's probably safe to assume that the quadro drivers don't have the optimisation and bug fixes for games.
 
if he's doing 2d stuff in CAD, then the geforce is fine. If he going to do any decent amount of 3D work in AutoCAD then get the quadro (or soft mod the 7800 if possible)

cards are either set up to push tons of textures and lighting (gamer card) or to push tons of polygons (workstation)

I'm running an X1800XT-512 and it does fairly well at game like F.E.A.R but really starts choking on a 3D model of this complexity:


gbi1228A1%20(Medium).jpg


I'm talking about just the polygons. the texture and light were done with google sketchup and that had a very hard time too while rotating the model.

btw, the card has nothing to do with final rendering on cad models.

I'm either going to have to bite the bullet and set up a second computer or find out from nvidia if a card like the 8800 can coexist with a quadro card on a dual pcie16 board.
 
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