If you can get the Quadro card to run the game to begin with, about as fast as a Nvidia GT200 GPU from two years ago.
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Nvidia-QuadroFX-4800-15-GB-Workstation-Graphics-Card/
About to embark on an experiment......
- Thread starter sethmcs
- Start date
If you can get the Quadro card to run the game to begin with, about as fast as a Nvidia GT200 GPU from two years ago.
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Nvidia-QuadroFX-4800-15-GB-Workstation-Graphics-Card/
I'm not joining in this thread for bragging rights. Just to clarify the differences between consumer-grade hardware and commercial-grade workstations.
The Quadro cards are specialized hardware that have multiple threading capabilities, and built-in special functions that go far beyond what the consumer-grade cards can do. In the old days, the CAD cards had built in primitives to help speed up the rendering of objects. The CAD software would call up specific vectoring information, and the card would interpret the information, and automatically draw that shape. This helped speed up the rendering of the image. I know because I used to troubleshoot graphics terminals that used the NEC720D graphics processor. This chip had the primitive set built in for circles, elipses, squares and shading. We're talking about something that was used about 25 years ago, but is relevent to this conversation.
Much later this work was done in software because the systems run faster, and today the cards are used for solid modeling instead of line rendering. The superfast pipelines, even if the card is based on an older chipset, such as the GF20x series, is far different that the commercial card. There are many additional pipelines for rendering and shading in realtime rates far faster than the consumer cards can handle.
Can these cards handle games? Sure they can, or I should say it depends. The Quadro 3700, for example plays games fine. In fact the playback on this card is not much different than on my GF470, which I have in my system. They both handle all of the complete Open/GL command set, and can handle the other functions that are available.
If the card has been specialized to handle video processing, then the pipelines and registers maybe setup differently, so rendering 3D images will happen, but at a slower rate that a general 3D graphic card.
The Xeon processors are a bit different than the i7, and again have different branching and piplelining. They have multiple instruction queues, and very high math precision not found in lower cost consumer-grade cpus. A good example is my brother's workstation he uses for 3D modeling. In one project, he borrowed my system for the modeling while he did some rendering on his workstation. I had an 8800GTS and an IDuo2 system at the time. There were missing faces and odd points that could not be adjusted on my system. When he rendered the image on the Xeon based system, the problem disappeared. He confirmed this with the software developer that this was a floating point precision issue with the processor. The workstation at the time had a single Xeon and an ancient Quadro 980, which is similar to the 8800 series NVidia consumer-grade video card.
The thing is with consumer-grade hardware, the system builder muscle the data through the system instead of letting the processor and video card do the work they really have to do to render the images. In the high-end workstations meant for this type of work, with specialized hardware so that the precision is there for accurate work as well as performance at the same time.
So having said this, I'm interested in seeing the outcome of this experiment. Who knows if the operation is super terriffic, then well perhaps we'll all have to go out and get the super high-end workstations to run our simulator at its ultimate best.
John
The Quadro cards are specialized hardware that have multiple threading capabilities, and built-in special functions that go far beyond what the consumer-grade cards can do. In the old days, the CAD cards had built in primitives to help speed up the rendering of objects. The CAD software would call up specific vectoring information, and the card would interpret the information, and automatically draw that shape. This helped speed up the rendering of the image. I know because I used to troubleshoot graphics terminals that used the NEC720D graphics processor. This chip had the primitive set built in for circles, elipses, squares and shading. We're talking about something that was used about 25 years ago, but is relevent to this conversation.
Much later this work was done in software because the systems run faster, and today the cards are used for solid modeling instead of line rendering. The superfast pipelines, even if the card is based on an older chipset, such as the GF20x series, is far different that the commercial card. There are many additional pipelines for rendering and shading in realtime rates far faster than the consumer cards can handle.
Can these cards handle games? Sure they can, or I should say it depends. The Quadro 3700, for example plays games fine. In fact the playback on this card is not much different than on my GF470, which I have in my system. They both handle all of the complete Open/GL command set, and can handle the other functions that are available.
If the card has been specialized to handle video processing, then the pipelines and registers maybe setup differently, so rendering 3D images will happen, but at a slower rate that a general 3D graphic card.
The Xeon processors are a bit different than the i7, and again have different branching and piplelining. They have multiple instruction queues, and very high math precision not found in lower cost consumer-grade cpus. A good example is my brother's workstation he uses for 3D modeling. In one project, he borrowed my system for the modeling while he did some rendering on his workstation. I had an 8800GTS and an IDuo2 system at the time. There were missing faces and odd points that could not be adjusted on my system. When he rendered the image on the Xeon based system, the problem disappeared. He confirmed this with the software developer that this was a floating point precision issue with the processor. The workstation at the time had a single Xeon and an ancient Quadro 980, which is similar to the 8800 series NVidia consumer-grade video card.
The thing is with consumer-grade hardware, the system builder muscle the data through the system instead of letting the processor and video card do the work they really have to do to render the images. In the high-end workstations meant for this type of work, with specialized hardware so that the precision is there for accurate work as well as performance at the same time.
So having said this, I'm interested in seeing the outcome of this experiment. Who knows if the operation is super terriffic, then well perhaps we'll all have to go out and get the super high-end workstations to run our simulator at its ultimate best.
John
You forgot to mention how the drivers come into play with the Quadro cards. The drivers for consumer cards are optimized for running games which the Quadro cards are not. Sure you can run some games on a Quadro card but don't expect every game to run as good as it would on a consumer card.
In the case of the Quadro FX4800 were also taking about two year old GT200 architecture, so obviously it's not going keep up with what Nvidia has released for the consumer/gaming grade cards since then.
As far as any benefit to running games on Xeon processors go, again just look in any good hardware forum. There are plenty of Xeon users in those forums who are running games, are they getting any better performance out of them compared to a regular i7, no.
A lot of the high end hardware enthusiast in those forums don't have a limit when it comes to all out performance. If “super high-end workstations” were better at running games you'd see more enthusiasts flocking to them a long time ago.
True. I did forget about the driver optimization. The Quadro drivers are much different than the standard NVidia drivers even though the cards may share the same underlying chipset.
In general gaming card force the data through the pipeline differently than the cad-type cards. This has to do with the architecture of the memory bus and everything else included.
Xeon processors are again in a different league than consumer-quality chips. They handle the X86 instruction set well, but do have other functions not tapped by consumer-type operating systems such as Windows 7 and the usual programs that run on the systems. These additional instructions are used for data manipulation by server operating systems, which handle instructions a bit differently. They are used by cad/cam software running Windows, but the programs themselves have additional instruction capable of tapping the goodies in the Xeon.
Yes, I agree that the workstations may play the game well, and it may or may not be at the top-end of performance that the hardware is capable of. This has to do with the basic-level that the workstations will be using. Again, the standard graphics calls for the video card, and the basic instructions used by the Xeon.
I really don't envision Xeons finding their way into the mainstream. The Xeon chips are pretty expensive and are only used in machines where they are really needed such as workstations and servers.
John
The test has begun and all I can say is Wow!
What a difference a workstation makes! All I can say is wow! The Quatro card rips through even the most detailed routes. Driver is sure more enjoyable. I got TRS2004 working and haven't even tried TRS2009 yet. My experience is TRS2009 works alot better than TRS2004. My only problem is Trainz Tuner does not seem to work with Windows 7. I wanted to try 5000m view and I can't change the Trainz options file (I don't have permission) Who is the boss anyway? Now working on stress test. Put 300+ cars in a yard want to add 400+ more with two 100 car moving trains. Maybe I'll blow this thing up.:hehe:
What a difference a workstation makes! All I can say is wow!
The Quatro card rips through even the most detailed routes. Driver is sure more enjoyable. I got TRS2004 working and haven't even tried TRS2009 yet. My experience is TRS2009 works alot better than TRS2004. My only problem is Trainz Tuner does not seem to work with Windows 7. I wanted to try 5000m view and I can't change the Trainz options file (I don't have permission) Who is the boss anyway? Now working on stress test. Put 300+ cars in a yard want to add 400+ more with two 100 car moving trains. Maybe I'll blow this thing up.:hehe:What a difference a workstation makes! All I can say is wow!
I am not surprised that the Quadro Card works so well for you. I have been using the small NVS 295 to run TRAINZ 09 for over a year and it works very well with low power consumption. At the time it had the best specs available to fit a PCI x1 slot. The on board Intel graphics chip would not even run Trainz 06 or 09.
tomurban
Compared to what?
May be you can post some screen shots using Fraps so we can do a comparison.:hehe:
When you say “the Quatro card rips through even the most detailed routes” what are you comparing it to? What were the specs on the machine you previously were running Trainz on?
What a difference a workstation makes! All I can say is wow!
I'm glad to hear this, Seth. This is the pipline and the large cache on the CAD card compared to the consumer-level cards that everyone else has.
Your processor may have something to do with the overall performance too as the Xeons have a large cache and handle threading differently than the rest of the Intel and AMD chips.
Re: the 5000 m thing. Try running the program in Administrator mode. This should allow you to write the file to the directory. Unless TrainzTuner doesn't work with TS2009.
John
I'm glad to hear this, Seth. This is the pipline and the large cache on the CAD card compared to the consumer-level cards that everyone else has.
Your processor may have something to do with the overall performance too as the Xeons have a large cache and handle threading differently than the rest of the Intel and AMD chips.
Re: the 5000 m thing. Try running the program in Administrator mode. This should allow you to write the file to the directory. Unless TrainzTuner doesn't work with TS2009.
John
Thanks John. I got Trainz Tuner working. The problem was I needed to load java to make it work. I am running at 3,000 meter draw distance I plan to up that to 5k or better for some screen shots once my route is ready.:wave:
So does it run Trainz or any other game for that matter any better than an i7 running at 3.3GHz with a GTX 280 or 285 from 2-3 years ago?
So does it run Trainz or any other game for that matter any better than an i7 running at 3.3GHz with a GTX 280 or 285 from 2-3 years ago?
Have no idea. Don't have i7 running at 3.3 GHz with GTX 280 or 285. Never seen one.:hehe: Nor does it matter. This machine runs fine for me. Here is the route that I am running on. http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?t=32069 This is TRS2004 route.
What would an Intel Xeon Six-Core X5680 3.33GHz be equivalent to? I’ll give you a hint, a six core i7 at 3.3GHz.
What’s the Quadro FX4800 based on, the two year old Nvidia GT200 GPU.
In a comparison that would prove that there is no advantage to some HP “work station” vs. an off the self i7 with a GTX 280, 285 or better yet a 400/500 GTX video card when it comes to gaming, it does matter.
So what did your experiment prove, the obvious, that your new machine out performs your old one?:hehe:
If this is any indication it doesn’t look like it would take much to impress him -
CaptEngland
Trainz Engineer
Now if someone can get Trainz running on a P60 based machine then I would be impressed.
What is the point of this tread? My machine is better than yours? Why is it always the American's who have to start these threads? Most of us do not care!
If trainz works without crashing then that is what you lot should be boasting about! :hehe:.
BTW, Us Brit's invented The world's first large-scale, electronic programmable computer, beat that!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8492762.stm
What is the point of this tread? My machine is better than yours? Why is it always the American's who have to start these threads? Most of us do not care!
If trainz works without crashing then that is what you lot should be boasting about! :hehe:.
BTW, Us Brit's invented The world's first large-scale, electronic programmable computer, beat that!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8492762.stm
Well, I don't know if you can categorically state that it's ALWAYS anyone that does anything... that's usually a mistake, but I agree on the point of the thread. I understood the first post, he decided to satisfy his curiosity and share the results with us, and that's all good, but then the "know it all" showed up. Really disgraceful display of hubris.
I hope the new system fulfills any desires you had for it in the first place, I'm sure it will suffice for Trainz.:wave:
Really, where’s the results and what’s the conclusion?
“Know it all” or someone who actually has experience with the subject to actually say otherwise or challenge the misinformation and misconceptions that get spread here?
That’s what many of us have been saying, some of the posts here are a display of hubris without a doubt.
The point was obviously never reached because no proof was ever given that the “work station” runs games any better than off the shelf high end components.
Is it because Americans have easier excess to high end computer hardware then other parts of the world? I don’t know, maybe you can do some research on that one and get back to us.
Lol, obviously you do or you wouldn’t have stopped and read the through the thread.