Soft FireGL V5600 Specviewperf Benchmarks

Theres good news for DCC/CAD professionals on a budget. As we all know the new FireGL series has dominated 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.

Many thanks to the chinese whiz who released the modded drivers.

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:

Verdict: Succesfully procured a 100$ workstation monster card that is able to lock horns with the mighty Quadro FX 4600.
Case closed!

 

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. Upon soft modding it is a giant killer. 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 card is a proven card.
4. Again I dare say that the results can be taken as a guage for 3ds Max perfomance.

Note: Things are not as simple as fps in real world production.

 

wow, veeery nice results, and may I say to you: good work, man!! lots of very useful information there

just one question:
I'm waiting for the processor for my new PC (it's taking a while to come home); I already have a 2600XT, which I will mod; but, while I wait, I'm benchmarking my old PC, to see how far this renewal gets me; I also run the SPECapc maya test, but it doesn't seem to be writing the results anywhere, so I'm just writing down the fps readings myself (the problem is that I won't be able to compare them with your numbers)

maybe it's because I have a Spanish windows with no "Program Files" directory (it's "Archivos de Programa" instead); or maybe it's because I don't have excel; or maybe because I'm using Maya 8.5 PLE; any clues?

another note: when modding my 9800pro, fps get nearly dobled in the SPECapc tests... but in real world I find the differences much bigger, there is one scene where I went from an unworkable 1.5fps to a quite fine nearly 15fps
maybe the difference is bigger with more complex scenes, which is where you need most help from your hardware

 

Thanks man...Yes real world results will be different frm synthetic ones which is why I posted the same...
2600XT is a strong card when softmodded to FireGL V5600....

Yes "program files" is necessary.
The mel script bundled finds the files relative to the systems Program Files directory

You can edit the mel script provided with specapc to get it to work for u.

 

it runs from my "Archivos de programa" folder, but then it doesn't store the results anywhere, it just exits

I'll try to modify the mel file; if I don't succeed, I'll just post my results measured in fps, and not comparable with those of any other human being...

 

fps will not be as accurate as the geometric mean ratios for obvious reasons, but if you dont have a choice, do it..
Good luck Norman

btw if someone finds anywhere about a successfult softmod of 2900Pro, please do post here...

 

can someone test modded 2900 card in SpecPerf "3dsmax Bench"?
it's primary for me

 

Maybe this is a dumb question but how can I softmod the ati HD 2600xt?

I did not buy it yet, but I was searching for a good graphics card for maya and sadly the professional range is to expensive for me. So this would be a realy nice sollution!!

Can you use every future in maya? Also the high quality rendering option in your view?

One more question, will maya work faster(smoother) with two of these cards?

thanks in advance, nice of you to share this with us.
Aaron

 

every future? do not understand this question. Directions to softmod are on this site, just do a search for it. Cant guarantee whatever model or brand you buy can be modded, look at and ask which brand ppl successfully modded. Not likely that maya will run smoother with 2, however the additional video memory will speed up scenes with large amounts of texture data. It is without question worth it, just do your research first.

 

I think he means feature, and I would say yes, this modded card is the same as a real fireGL

I haven't done much with it yet, but mine is working fine so far: ati's catalyst control center doesn't work but maya is way faster than with my previous PC (up to 6x for complex scenes), I haven't had artifacts, dual screen works fine, and so on

still, I don't have a real pro card, only softmodded ones, so I can't tell you if there's something you can do with the real thing that cannot be done with softmodded cards

by the way, I don't think an additional vga will help much; not even the memory: you get twice the amount, but you also have to store most stuff twice (if you want more power, you can go 2900XT instead of 2600XT, and that will give you a 50% higher specviewperf maya score, at the price of a more expensive, noisy and hot VGA; you can also try the new 2900pro, but I'm not sure that one can be softmodded yet)

 

thanks guys,

yes I ment feature :knock:
I now have an old p4 HT with an redeon 9700 in it, bad bad bad and more bad eeleft:. So I am looking for a way to build a new inexpensive new system, but ofcourse I wan't it to perform the best it can with maya(for the bucks I put into it).
So this is realy interresting.

Again thanks for the reply.

Aaron

 

ok, here I go...

my old PC:

athlonXP2500+@2.15GHz
radeon9800pro@FireGLX2
1GB DDR400 RAM

my new PC:

core2quad6600@3GHz
radeonHD2600XT@FireGLv5600
4GB DDR2-667 RAM

(note: this new PC is already working, but not everything has been dealt with; in particular, some drivers are still not installed... if they change the numbers somehow, I'll post some new results)


SPECVIEWPERF 10 RESULTS:

Q6600@3GHz + HD2600XT@FireGL
1280x1024, standard specviewperf10 test

Viewset Composite Mulitsample Performance
3dsmax-04....38.98
catia-02.....34.08
ensight-03...16.44
maya-02.....132.39
proe-04......34.09
sw-01........82.46
tcvis-01.....17.96
ugnx-01......20.92


SPECapc MAYA test results:

I run this on my Maya 8 PLE (maybe it's 8.5, I don't remember)
I couldn't get it to record the results, so I typed down some representative fps number for each test (in each mode: wireframe, shaded, etc.), which is what I report here (thus it's impossible to compare this with anybody else's results, but you can compare mine between them)

2500+@2.15GHz + 9800pro

werewolf..80 - 52 - 28 - 25 - 20
hand......23 - 7 - 5.5 - 5.1
ants_20...33 - 20 - 10 - 8.6 - 8.2
ants_200..38 - 24 - 12 - 10.9 - 10.4
squid.....60 - 38 - 28 - 26 - 24
hand_def..1.4 - 1.2 - 1.4



2500+@2.15GHz + 9800pro@fireGLX2

werewolf..83 - 47 - 14 - 14 - 12
hand......7.5 - 2.6 - 1.9 - 1.9
ants_20...38 - 21 - 9.4 - 8.4 - 8.0
ants_200..42 - 25 - 11.8 - 10.6 - 10.0
squid.....62 - 36 - 26 - 24 - 22
hand_def..1.2 - 1.1 - 1.2



Q6600@3GHz + HD2600XT

werewolf..130 - 65 - 29 - 25 - 22
hand......11 - 7 - 4 - 4
ants_20...69 - 37 - 14 - 13 - 12
ants_200..77 - 45 - 18 - 16 - 15
squid.....100 - 70 - 56 - 53 - 48
hand_def..3.5 - 2.8 - 3.4



Q6600@3GHz + HD2600XT@FireGLv5600

werewolf..195 - 185 - 125 - 117 - 75
hand......116 - 132 - 63 - 30
ants_20...109 - 70 - 40 - 38 - 35
ants_200..113 - 79 - 46 - 43 - 41
squid.....125 - 87 - 68 - 64 - 58
hand_def..3.6 - 2.9 - 3.4


some additional comments:

* even before modding, the new pc is beating the after-mod old PC in all the tests; impressive, I would say

* after modding, it is definitely a very, very fast system, all the tests here worked with 30+ fps in all modes... except for hand_def, which is an animation with some simple deformers applied to a reasonably high-poly model of a hand (maybe it's 200K vertices or so, I don't remember)

* the biggest diferences ar in the hand test (not hand_def), which has some models with 689K vertices stupidly spinning around

* I still haven't worked on maya yet (just used it for these tests, I had some real work to do elsewhere), but I saw no glitches: dual screen is working ok, there are no artifacts, etc. the only problem so far is that catalyst control center is not working, but that seems to be because I don't have some stupid .NET stuff (which I couldn't install yet because my internet connection is dead right now)

so there you go...

 

@Norman
Congrats!!!

For the Maya app test you have to copy the results in the generated .csv file into the raw test results page of the results excel file thats given as template and then compare ratios...Thats the way to do it. Check my ratios in the first post. For more info look into the "readme" text file.

Well, the modded FireGLs work as good as the real ones. We use both at work and I cant tell them apart unless I open the cabinet and look at the stickerver:

 

yes, I know... but it doesn't generate the csv file, it just exits maya
I don't care so much, anyway, I think the point is there already

what is more important is... that now I have tried to do some real stuff in maya, and so far it is crashing very, very often!! (some arctifacts appear, then the whole system freezes, every time I move a couple of vertex from an object, no matter how simple it is)

maybe it's some driver problem specific to my setup (I never got Catalyst Control Center to work), but maybe the mod is not so good

have you experienced such problems?

 

I'm still confused as to why a soft mod makes it better.

 

Here's my benchmarks

3dsmax-04 27.59 up to 4x
catia-02 25.98 up to 4x
ensight-03 27.25 up to 0x
maya-02 135.75 up to 0x
proe-04 25.52 up to 4x
sw-01 62.41 up to 4x
tcvis-01 18.79 up to 2x
ugnx-01 30.98 up to 0x

System:

Foxconn P9657AB ~$80
E4400 Chip ~$120
Ultra XFinity 600W PSU ~$30
2GB 800DDR ~$45
Ultra Case ~$40
140GB SATA HD ~$30
DVD Drive ~$15
HIS 512MB IceQ 2600XT ~$150

First I tried it on Vista and couldn't get it to work, so I installed XP Pro and it works fine. I did have some troubles installing CCC, but that's because I didn't have dotNET 1.1 or 2.0 installed before trying to install the rar.

 

It's much faster in professional 3D applications, such as Autodesk Maya, Softimage XSI, etc. (the ones specviewperf uses, plus some others)

If you are not going to use these, modding your card to its professional version is a Very Bad Idea: you will not get improvements anywhere, games will probably be slower, and you are risking trouble with hacked unnofficial drivers (instability, glitches, etc.)

as of my problems with maya...

I installed .NET and CCC, and the problem wasn't solved

yet the problems seems related to the vga fan: my vga fan is usually not rotating at all during windows usage, even when working with Maya!! (it's not dead, it works while booting, then stops when windows is loaded)

I'll investigate that further

In the meantime, just to calm me down... is anybody being able to do real work in maya with this drivers?

 

i'll let you know after this week-end. tomorrow i'll have my 2600xt.

i still looking foward to have 64bit driver

 

ok...Just a warning.
Soft FireGL has problems with selecting poly objects in Maya...There is a delay.
Also seems to select the first object in the outliner when 2 objects are concurrent...Damn...

As they say professional graphics isnt just abt fps...:camo:

 

Hi again

the problems I'm experiencing seem due to some hardware problem with my vga: with a clean windows installation and standard (not modded) drivers, 3dmark01 works perfectly but 03, 05 and 06 won't even start (prime95 reports no errors in 4 hours of 4-thread testing, and goldmemory didn't find anything wrong either, in a 16 hour test)

anyway, when I do get maya to work, I also get that annoying selection lag that vijaynair described: in the hand scene from the SPECapc benchmark, it takes more than 10 seconds between my click and the hand being highlighted; if I want to go to vertex selection mode, I have to hold the right bottom in my mouse for about 15 seconds, which is how much the context menu takes to appear; if I want to go back to object mode, I have to hold it for 26 seconds

there's a couple of new quadros in the cheap side: the 370 gets a 52 in maya and costs 133eur, while the 570 gets a 73 and costs 210 eur; if these were available when I bought my pc, maybe I would have gone for them; after all these problems, and if vijaynair (or someone else) can confirm that the selection-lag in maya doesn't happen with quadro cards, it seems the best choice (though maybe I'm skewed because of my other problems)