{"id":18,"date":"2007-10-31T00:12:21","date_gmt":"2007-10-31T07:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2007\/10\/31\/graphics-cards-nvidia-vs-ati\/"},"modified":"2007-10-31T00:12:21","modified_gmt":"2007-10-31T07:12:21","slug":"graphics-cards-nvidia-vs-ati","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2007\/10\/31\/graphics-cards-nvidia-vs-ati\/","title":{"rendered":"Graphics Cards-NVidia vs ATI"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have\u00c2\u00a0had an NVidia<\/a> vs ATI<\/a> article in mind for a while now, but two recent announcements have brought that topic\u00c2\u00a0to the top of the list.\u00c2\u00a0 Both NVidia and ATI released information on new products this week.\u00c2\u00a0 NVidia added a new mid-level option to its GeForce8 line in the 8800GT<\/a>, and ATI published details of its upcoming HD 3800<\/a> generation of DirectX10.1 cards. The ATI announcement is of little consequence, since there are few applications for DirectX10.1<\/a> in the post-production workflow, and ATI is rarely the solution of choice in this field.\u00c2\u00a0 The GeForce 8800GT on the other hand,\u00c2\u00a0has a few unique feature that might be of benefit in the post-production world.\u00c2\u00a0 The first is support for PCIe 2.0<\/a> which simply put, doubles the available\u00c2\u00a0bandwidth to and from the card from the motherboard.\u00c2\u00a0 The increasing the bandwidth FROM the card is of little use to the card’s target audience,\u00c2\u00a0gamers, \u00c2\u00a0since all almost output from games\u00c2\u00a0is sent to the monitor, BUT applications that depend on the GPU to process video before saving it back to disk could see more significant benefits from this.\u00c2\u00a0 With performance almost equal to the 8800GTX, the new card will take up one less slot, and if initial reviews are accurate, it will generate less heat and noise, and draw less power than any similar product.\u00c2\u00a0 This is especially important in the post-production environment, since the average high-end workstation is stuffed full of drives and I\/O cards, and excessive noise is detrimental to certain creative processes.<\/p>\n

As newer post-production software is developed to squeeze\u00c2\u00a0every last bit of available\u00c2\u00a0performance out of available hardware, the GPU is becoming a more important factor in building a high performance workstation.\u00c2\u00a0 A few pieces of software that I\u00c2\u00a0use that\u00c2\u00a0depend on the GPU are: Matrox’s AXIO-LE<\/a>, Red Giant’s Magic Bullet<\/a> (especially Colorista), and Iridas’ SpeedGradeHD<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Each has a list of supported cards, and hopefully there will be some intersection in those subsets, or these software applications will be incompatible with each other.\u00c2\u00a0 For any given product, there are usually a variety of options, sometime ranging in price from $50-$2500.\u00c2\u00a0 Determining which of these options best suits your needs is an important decision, and sometimes the best choice is not immediately apparent.
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\nThe competition between NVidia and ATI used to be much stronger, but recently, NVidia has pulled ahead significantly.\u00c2\u00a0 I am not sure if this is related to ATI’s abrupt acquisition by AMD<\/a> last year, or anything else, but NVidia’s development has been consistently resulting in products that are much more capable than ATI’s.\u00c2\u00a0 In the professional arena, ATI doesn’t even offer features like SDI<\/a> outputs and Genlock<\/a>, to compete with NVidia’s offerings.\u00c2\u00a0 These specific features are very\u00c2\u00a0relevant to the utilization of these cards in the post-production workflow.\u00c2\u00a0 SLI<\/a> is another\u00c2\u00a0NVidia development\u00c2\u00a0that ATI has no answer for in their professional line, but implementations of that technology are more tailored to 3D animation and scientific applications.\u00c2\u00a0 Stereoscopic<\/a> output has been offered by NVidia’s QuadroFX line for many years, although their solution is a bit outdated at this point.<\/p>\n

ATI has few\u00c2\u00a0advantages to\u00c2\u00a0counter with.\u00c2\u00a0 The most significant one I am aware of, for post-production, is that the ATI architecture is\u00c2\u00a0better optimized for returning processed images to the system bus.\u00c2\u00a0 Certain applications are able to pass more data to and from ATI cards than their Nvidia counterparts, which is beneficial if you plan to do more than preview the results on screen.\u00c2\u00a0 This is why Matrox’s AXIO-LE<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0gets better performance\u00c2\u00a0when paired with\u00c2\u00a0ATI cards than much more powerful NVidia solutions.\u00c2\u00a0 Another issue I have seen with Cineform’s RT engine in Premiere is a color shift between between the video overlay and still frames.\u00c2\u00a0 According to David Newman at Cineform, this is due to an inconsistent implementation of YUV overlay on NVidia cards (See his comment on the ProspectHD post) and ATI cards, to their credit,\u00c2\u00a0do not suffer from this problem.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0There are very\u00c2\u00a0few other features in ATI’s favor that I am aware of,\u00c2\u00a0but I am always open to being enlightened in that regard if I am overlooking something significant.\u00c2\u00a0 Given the current state of things, my recommended choice in most cases, would be to go with an NVidia based card.<\/p>\n

Choosing between NVidia and ATI solutions is not the only\u00c2\u00a0significant step in the selection process.\u00c2\u00a0 Frequently, the most confusing aspect of choosing a new display card, is motivated by chipmakers’ desire to make\u00c2\u00a0higher profits\u00c2\u00a0from business customers, in that “professional” 3D graphics cards are much higher priced,\u00c2\u00a0than seemingly identical consumer gaming 3D graphics cards.\u00c2\u00a0 The actual specific differences are rather vague in many cases, and will depend on the requirements of\u00c2\u00a0your application.\u00c2\u00a0 Certain features such as SDI output and Genlock are clearly exclusive to professional hardware, and product support is much better\u00c2\u00a0for the professional lines,\u00c2\u00a0but when it comes to GPU processing, the differences are not so obvious.\u00c2\u00a0 This is especially true since both companies utilize a unified driver architecture, allowing the same drivers to support almost any of their cards.\u00c2\u00a0 Both companies throw around the term OpenGL<\/a> in regards to their professional cards, but most of the same features are available from the consumer cards.\u00c2\u00a0 I have used OpenGL acceleration in After Effects, and have found no real differences, but I am not a professional animator, so higher end 3D animation and modeling programs might see certain advantages.<\/p>\n

ATI has their FireGL<\/a> line of professional cards to compare to their Radeon<\/a> series.\u00c2\u00a0 I have used very few of these cards, so I can offer little in the way of advice.\u00c2\u00a0 They are rarely recommended or required by post-production software solutions.\u00c2\u00a0 My primary experience with the Radeon line has been in conjunction with the Matrox AXIO-LE, and I have not been impressed with the stability or features of the cards.\u00c2\u00a0 The\u00c2\u00a0most important\u00c2\u00a0feature that\u00c2\u00a0I find totally unsupported is the hardware spanning of two displays.\u00c2\u00a0 I also\u00c2\u00a0have occasional\u00c2\u00a0vertical sync issues when running LCDs at 1920×1200, but all this is based on my experience with two X1900 series cards.\u00c2\u00a0 I have much more experience, and a greater level of success with NVidia cards.<\/p>\n

Nvidia’s QuadroFX<\/a> line of professional graphics cards is VERY similar to their GeForce<\/a> line of cards, and with even greater price differences.\u00c2\u00a0 In my experience, most software runs equally well\u00c2\u00a0if not better on GeForce<\/a> cards compared to their\u00c2\u00a0QuadroFX<\/a> relatives.\u00c2\u00a0 I own a QuadroFX3400 which is almost exactly identical to the GeForce6800GTX, and was four times the\u00c2\u00a0MSRP when I bought it.\u00c2\u00a0 Although the card has served me well, I have found no compelling reason to have required it over the similar GeForce option.\u00c2\u00a0 There is a rumor that Nvidia disabled certain functions when they released their newest generation of consumer cards, that will now only be available from the QuadroFX line, but I have not been able to confirm that.\u00c2\u00a0 Specifically they are said to have disabled hardware support for full screen video overlay, (allowing full screen preview in an NLE)\u00c2\u00a0which I intend to test once I get a working GeForce8 card.\u00c2\u00a0 I would appreciate information about\u00c2\u00a0anyone else’s experiences in this regard.\u00c2\u00a0 If that is true, it means that we might soon find signicant disadvantages from using consumer cards for professional work, but fortunately, I do not think we have yet come to that point.<\/p>\n

What all that boils down to is, currently Nvidia is the performance leader, and unless you have a compelling reason to shell out the money for a QuadroFX model,\u00c2\u00a0a GeForce card should be suitable for most applications.\u00c2\u00a0 That said,the new 8800GT is a remarkable value for almost anyone who needs a powerful GPU. (Please note I am NOT speaking of the much lower end 8600GT card)\u00c2\u00a0 As an added\u00c2\u00a0benefit,\u00c2\u00a0the new 8800GT\u00c2\u00a0should run cooler and quieter than any other card with similar performance.\u00c2\u00a0 I also expect that the\u00c2\u00a0new PCIe 2.0 compatibility\u00c2\u00a0should be able to be taken advantage of\u00c2\u00a0with upcoming release of the next generation of Intel\u00c2\u00a0Xeon workstation\u00c2\u00a0platform early next month. \u00c2\u00a0If I hadn’t been in the process of acquiring the similar 8800GTX, which is at least twice the size, price, heat, power, and noise, for similar resulting performance, I would have already ordered a GT by now,\u00c2\u00a0and still might\u00c2\u00a0do so\u00c2\u00a0regardless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have\u00c2\u00a0had an NVidia vs ATI article in mind for a while now, but two recent announcements have brought that topic\u00c2\u00a0to the top of the list.\u00c2\u00a0 Both NVidia and ATI released information on new products this week.\u00c2\u00a0 NVidia added a new mid-level option to its GeForce8 line in the 8800GT, and ATI published details of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,17],"tags":[26,36,25,37,35],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}