LOSTCIRCUITS

Conclusions, Disillusions and Misconceptions

To start with the last point, a lost of this article makes it appear as if a dual AMD platform is not suitable for an OpenGL entry-to-midlevel workstation. This is absolutely not true, there are many applications involving 3D rendering, ray tracing, etc where this platform is absolutely superior. Nonetheless it is more this kind of content creation that is the forté of the dual AMD platform which is somewhat dificult to demostrate in form of benchmarks. On the other hand, memory bandwidth on the system level is what counts and what propels the performance of the FireGL 8800 in our benchmarks and that is where everybody else performs better than a dual Athlon system.

Another misconception is that a card like the FireGL will offer the best image quality also for the gaming community. Dead wrong .... !! There is a very distinct difference between image precision and image quality or whatever we may call the little tricks that are used to provide a more pleasing visual experience. Suffice it to say that there is no Anti Aliasing provided. Why not? Because the FireGL shoots for precision or high-image-fidelity instead of smooth transitions from one subpixel to another which, by definition, introduces alteration of the original content. It would be nice, though, if some form of smoothvision could be added to the existing driver package, just to give the card a bit more of an all around value.

Disillusions

The main disillusion is that it appears as if there is still some headroom in the drivers. The main reasons are that even some OpenGL applications don't run correctly or very slow on the FireGL as well as the sensitivity to some of the memory timings. Examples are that the P4S533 would crash with the memory running at 166 MHz in quite a few of the OpenGL applications, Design Review and Pro Engineer are just two examples, however, the same system had no problems if memory latencies were set to the lowest values (2:2:2, 6T, 1T CMD and 4 bank interleaving) or easier, the memory bus was running in 4:6 ratio, that is at a whopping DDR400 speed.

Sure enough, it is not possible to do this with every stick of memory and as of current, there is a temporary shortage of PC3200 with Samsung trading performance in for profitability in their latest "D" die revision. On the other hand, this will change over the next few weeks again and whoever will spend the money on a FireGL 8800 should have the necessary change to go with the top memory compared to the "basic" stuff, the extra money is nothing compared to the overall system cost.

Conclusions

Is the FireGL8800 the answer to all prayers? People are praying for strange things these days and so the answer is a definite "No". Is the FireGL worth a consideration for any entry level graphics workstation? The answer is a definite yes, especially if it is the lower cost FireGL 8700 which is very similar except that it is running at lower clock and memory speed. However, if can be found for as low as US$ 300 and paired with any KT333 system, this will make for a bombshell of a system with regard to price performance ratio.

For the higher end systems, cards like the FireGL 8800 are the little nails that try to close the coffin of professional cards like the wildcat series of 3DLabs but then the more dangerous cards here are the Quadro series from nVidia, at least if we can belive AcesHardware. But that would be a leap of faith, wouldn't it.

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