x2 ATI 3870 or a FireGL/Quadro?

Joined
Nov 10, 2004
Messages
58
Ok, heres the deal...

I use sketchup ALL the time. Im a Landscape Architecture student and use it for almost all of my projects. That being said, here's my dilema.

I recently bought a Lenovo T61p with a 256mb Quadro card. It runs sketchup fantastically fast. After noticing this performance gain, I decided it was time to upgrade the graphical power of my desktop. So, i went out and got myself two Visiontek 3870s and have them running in Crossfire. Now, both the laptop and the desktop are Core2Duo 2.4Ghz with 2GB of ram, but the laptop, even with the 256mb card, runs sketchup faster.

As some of you may know, Sketchup is an OpenGL based program. My thoughts at the moment is that ATI has cut some OpenGL support out as almost no game uses it anymore, while the quadro keeps full OpenGL support, hence the performance gain.

So heres the question... the 3870's say they have OpenGL 2.0 support, but do they really? And, if I were to return these 3870's, would a FireGL or Quadro card have supperior performance over the 3870s?

Lastly, what to buy? I have an operating budget up to 700 dollars, FireGL or Quadro?

thanks so much for the input. I realize that most people on here will vote for just keeping the 3870s as they are the best gaming option, but the performance is terrible, just barely superior to setting sketchup to software rendering mode.

Thanks again
 
I hate to blatantly bump my post... But I really need help on this... does anybody have any insight? Thanks again...
 
Since no one else has responded....

I think the difference is in the drivers. Professional graphics cards such as ATI's FireGL and nVidia's Quadro cards are basically the same hardware as our consumer gaming graphics cards, but the drivers is where the difference is. The pro cards have drivers that are specifically suited for your work.

You may be able to find a software utility to run that will "soft mod" your 3870 to a FireGL so you can install the professional drivers.

Here is a thread of a person asking the same question, but got no answer yet.
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=246677
 
Thanks for the info. I'll look into softmodding them I guess... Hope there's something out there!

If anybody has any info on such matters, dont hesitate to mention it please :)
 
Back
Top