By Ted wolf (Tawolf) (67.1.77.18) on Monday, January 20, 2003 - 01:13 am:

Need some advise,

I am going to upgrade my lw work station, the system will be based on a dual xeon 2.8 gig processor. I was thinking of using the new Wildcat VP870 vid adapter with dual 20" monitors.
However Brad Carvey had mentioned possible open GL problems with the dual monitor mode in his latest KeyFrame Review of the product.

Has anyone got any feedback, I must have two monitors I've become spoiled. Please advise on a different adapter (less than $600) if you would.
Tawolf

By Psyhke (Jbeck) (24.163.209.122) on Monday, January 20, 2003 - 12:00 pm:

Hi Ted,

I'm using a Quadro 750XGL that I just recently purchased. It seems to be handling dual monitors pretty smoothly. There are no screen artifacts, or hard errors. Only 'problems' have been me trying to figure out which nView modes and drivers work best (each driver version has it own quirks, but nothing drastic). Haven't even tried the absolute latest drivers.

I'm definitely pleased with it. But then again, I upgraded from a Matrox G550!

By Rob Trombino (Extrabyte) (209.6.255.51) on Monday, January 20, 2003 - 06:26 pm:

Hi Ted.

I would like to see you check out the ATI Fire GL X1. I know it's more than the $600 that you want to spend. But from what I've researched, if you were to combine the X1 with a single P4 3+ Ghz which has hyperthreading, I believe your benefit would be considerably higher. All for the same or less investment. The X1 not only has realtime rendering, it also assists with the actual rendering as well.

Good luck with your decision.

By RJ Forbes (Noclar7) (142.166.206.2) on Monday, January 20, 2003 - 08:36 pm:

Hey Psyhke,

I feel for ya man, I'm still using a millenium G 450 here and I'm just waiting for the new Geforce FX cards to come out.. Is the quadro really well worth the cash? my original plan was to get a XGL 980 8X AGP but I heard there isn't really any differece when using LW as with the Geforce 4 Ti, and that when the Geforce FX cards come out in another couple weeks, it will blow them all out of the water.

Sorry to cut in Ted, I'm going to be getting to a new Dual Xeon 2.4 system from Boxx fairly shortly as well, have you considered the geforce FX or am I way off track here in the base consumer market.

Cheers,
Rj

By Psyhke (Jbeck) (24.163.209.122) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 12:35 am:

RJ,

I don't know how it would compare to a GF Ti card, I have a feeling it would probably be very similar, and could have saved some money going with one. But my company paid for it, and we had to get it by the end of 2002 for tax benefits, so I couldn't wait for the FX cards. All I can say is that it is leaps and bounds faster than my Matrox. So I certainly have no complaints.

By RJ Forbes (Noclar7) (142.166.199.29) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 12:47 pm:

I think you guys might wanto check out www.nvidia.com today

just what I've been waiting for ... Quadro FX

By Psyhke (Jbeck) (24.163.209.122) on Wednesday, January 22, 2003 - 12:16 am:

Any solid news on the pricing? I read rumor at CGTalk that the they will start at $1000 USD. Looks like a killer card, but if the price is over double what my recently purchased 750XGL is, then I won't kick myself as much...

By Paul Kooi (Paul_Kooi) (206.124.18.71) on Friday, January 31, 2003 - 01:33 am:

Do not go wildcat we have the best they make at work and it is a total disaster. They Are Really Overpriced, and the performance is about the same as a low end Ge Force 4. Also we have found some serious LW Bugs. The Wildcat we found out after are being developed with a focus on CAD apparently. Be forewarned.

By Andrew Morgan (Aegisprime) (194.117.133.118) on Friday, January 31, 2003 - 10:36 am:

Get a GeForce4 Ti4600 and turn it into a Quadro4 900 using my handy dandy SoftQuadro for Dummies guide ;-)

By oliver hyde (Ohyde) (144.137.209.172) on Monday, February 03, 2003 - 11:28 pm:

hi

rob, I was wondering if you could give me a link on how the ati fire gl x1 could improve rendering & would this work with dual p 4 3gh+ cpus as well.

thanks
ohyde

By Rob Trombino (Extrabyte) (209.6.255.51) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 09:24 am:

Hi Oliver.

The best place to start is over the ATI website.

Here's a link to the overview page. http://mirror.ati.com/products/workstation/fireglx1/index.html

As far as I know, the P4 was not designed for a dual proc setup. The Xeon is the closest thing I know of at 2.8Ghz. But they both have Hyperthreading which let's them perform essentially like 2 procs as well as a nice big data pipe at 533 Mhz. So you can just use one CPU and just set Layout at a higher Multithread setting. This where the cost savings over a dual proc setup is realized. Besides, I would much rather see you get as much system ram as possible. One thing I've learned is that there is no such thing as too much ram! There are benchmarks showing the render speed increase with Hyperthreading.

The X1 is fairly new so there aren't a lot of reviews yet. As soon as I find them or anything else of relevence, I'll post a link here.