Part 2: 2D, Acceleration, And Windows: Aren't All Graphics Cards Equal?

Guest · Feb 16, 2010

In Part 1, we introduced you to some of the issues today's high-end graphics cards have with 2D functionality and the benchmark we wrote to test our observations. Today, we have even more performance data and additional depth on how 2D works in Windows.

Part 2: 2D, Acceleration, And Windows: Aren't All Graphics Cards Equal? : Read more

mdm08 · Feb 16, 2010

I have a 5850 with 10.1 drivers and it seems Photoshop CS4 doesn't recognize it as a graphics card that can improve performance so all those cool new features like animated zoom, kinetic panning, and such seem to be disabled. Also, it when you have a very complex group of objects and you try to nudge it ( move it one pixel with arrow keys) the computer actually shows the spinning wheel and has to process this instead of being instantaneous like it was on my older 7600GT. Is this an issue related with what this article is saying about apps written for GDI or is this a different issue i'm experiencing?

jrharbort · Feb 16, 2010

Scores on 9600M GT and T9600 Core 2 Duo with Windows XP and latest graphics drivers. Only 11 active background processes no including benchmark, and themes disabled.

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 8556 chars/sec
Line: 47513 lines/sec
Polygon: 7757 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 6564 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 3874 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 13974 operations/sec
Stretching: 266 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 10510 splines/sec
Score: 984

Guest · Feb 16, 2010

It would be great if you can run the test on some "pro" cards (quadroFX, quadroNVS, firePro & fireMV). Just to see if the "pro" drivers change standard UI rendering or the optimizations are only for the professional DCC software.

liquidsnake718 · Feb 16, 2010

[citation][nom]mdm08[/nom]I have a 5850 with 10.1 drivers and it seems Photoshop CS4 doesn't recognize it as a graphics card that can improve performance so all those cool new features like animated zoom, kinetic panning, and such seem to be disabled. Also, it when you have a very complex group of objects and you try to nudge it ( move it one pixel with arrow keys) the computer actually shows the spinning wheel and has to process this instead of being instantaneous like it was on my older 7600GT. Is this an issue related with what this article is saying about apps written for GDI or is this a different issue i'm experiencing?[/citation]
Oh great, more news on a 5xxx series not being able to handle simple apps like CS4.... I have yet to use CS4 on my desktop with my 5850..... I hope Ati comes out with more patches if this is a problem.

taltamir · Feb 16, 2010

windows XP is dead... get on the windows 7 64bit bandwagon already you Luddites! (not referring to the authors of the article, they raise good points; I am referring to those customers who insist that XP is some sort of holy grail of windows bliss never seen before or after)

Guest · Feb 16, 2010

Scores on P4 2.8 HT Northwood W ati 2600 pro drivers 10.1 aero Win 7 :
BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 8106 chars/sec
Line: 6528 lines/sec
Polygon: 249 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 1484 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 6127 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 379 operations/sec
Stretching: 80 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 5263 splines/sec
Score: 362

Guest · Feb 16, 2010

Scores on P4 2.8 HT Northwood W ati 2600 pro drivers 10.1 aero Win 7 :

BENCHMARK: DIB-BUFFER AND BLIT

Text: 12633 chars/sec
Line: 21067 lines/sec
Polygon: 4087 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 535 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 5604 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 1443 operations/sec
Stretching: 213 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 12213 splines/sec
Score: 607

giovanni86 · Feb 16, 2010

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 54466 chars/sec
Line: 73135 lines/sec
Polygon: 23943 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 3927 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 26911 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 9827 operations/sec
Stretching: 464 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 41911 splines/sec
Score: 2600

helle040 · Feb 16, 2010

Rdaeon 4670, amd 7750be, winxp, drivers 10.1, resolutie 1280x1024, 32bit
Text: 45746
line: 40508
Splines/beziers: 20466
Poygon: 322
Rectangle: 1954
Arc/E.: 3494
Biting: 2406
Stretching: 211
Score: 1150

wxj · Feb 16, 2010

I’ve always preferred GDI operations over those of the NOD. GDI have more basic operations set verses NOD’s more complex and sometimes unreliable operations.

snemarch · Feb 16, 2010

A couple of ideas...

First, try adding a DDB (device dependent bitmap) test mode as well - even if your DIBs are using the same colordepth as the display mode, perhaps some drivers fail to optimize for this?

Second, what about the power savings mode modern GPUs tend to run in, in 2D mode? I'm not sure what it takes to kick out of the power-savings mode, but perhaps it could be as simple as creating a D3D context and displaying a single frame?

helle040 · Feb 16, 2010

I have two more scores, 950, 1002,and the first was 1150 So how is this possible, more then 10% difference?

JonathanDeane · Feb 16, 2010

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 45496 chars/sec
Line: 44352 lines/sec
Polygon: 12293 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 7013 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 9854 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 7265 operations/sec
Stretching: 642 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 36955 splines/sec
Score: 1853

4870 Windows 7 running Cat 9.12

ljbade · Feb 16, 2010

When will they get curves/ellipses fixed?

proofhitter · Feb 16, 2010

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 57405 chars/sec
Line: 42421 lines/sec
Polygon: 14198 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 10724 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 18070 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 16297 operations/sec
Stretching: 615 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 37779 splines/sec
Score: 2382

BENCHMARK: DIB-BUFFER AND BLIT

Text: 38521 chars/sec
Line: 145631 lines/sec
Polygon: 22599 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 2572 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 30395 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 10595 operations/sec
Stretching: 1082 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 47304 splines/sec
Score: 2904

Windows 7 core i7 920@3.8 ati 4890 Catalyst 10.1

snemarch · Feb 16, 2010

[citation][nom]ljbade[/nom]When will they get curves/ellipses fixed?[/citation]Probably not the easiest thing to accelerate on a GPU - the prime candidates would be filled polys, rectangles (subset of polys) and blits (including stretched ones - easy to do with a 3D quad or two tris).

Points, lines, bezier curves, arcs (and circles, a subset of arc), ellipses, unfilled polys/rectangles ... all those aren't easily/efficiently implemented with the core 3D primitive: filled polygons. Perhaps some of it can be efficiently implemented with shaders, but that's uncharted territory for me

amdfangirl · Feb 16, 2010

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 25419 chars/sec
Line: 26376 lines/sec
Polygon: 8153 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 1152 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 8672 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 3359 operations/sec
Stretching: 455 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 15977 splines/sec
Score: 1011

CPU: C2D e4300
GFX: GMA 3100
MB: G31
OS: Win 7

Guest · Feb 16, 2010

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE (AMD FUSION: Max Performance)
Text: 17806 chars/sec
Line: 20636 lines/sec
Polygon: 17975 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 3312 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 23234 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 6199 operations/sec
Stretching: 321 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 20157 splines/sec
Score: 1433

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE (AMD FUSION: Productibity)
Text: 6140 chars/sec
Line: 5109 lines/sec
Polygon: 5233 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 1017 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 6819 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 1851 operations/sec
Stretching: 104 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 5673 splines/sec
Score: 427

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE
Text: 43898 chars/sec
Line: 73421 lines/sec
Polygon: 17483 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 2989 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 21805 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 6082 operations/sec
Stretching: 363 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 35804 splines/sec
Score: 2138

Windows vista 64, Phenom2 x3 720 (4 core enabled), Catalyst 10.1, ati 5850

rickzor · Feb 16, 2010

Wow, voodoo4 actually made better than newer gpu proposals in some tests, despite the fact that it was running under win98.

gamerk316 · Feb 16, 2010

*Sigh*, again, why I prefer OpenGL instead; having two seperate operation pipelines for 2d/3d space is just madness...

salem80 · Feb 16, 2010

My new cad will be voodoo4 !

snemarch · Feb 16, 2010

[citation][nom]gamerk316[/nom]*Sigh*, again, why I prefer OpenGL instead; having two seperate operation pipelines for 2d/3d space is just madness...[/citation]OpenGL wasn't an option when GDI was introduced, and doesn't handle multiple targets (printer, screen)... and 2D/3D has been unified in DirectX for quite a while

JohnnyLucky · Feb 16, 2010

Sometimes we get questions in the forums from graphics designers, design engineers, and university students about building a new pc suitable for use with Adobe, AutoCad, and other similar applications. What should we tell them about selecting a video card?

stryk55 · Feb 16, 2010

[citation][nom]wxj[/nom]I’ve always preferred GDI operations over those of the NOD. GDI have more basic operations set verses NOD’s more complex and sometimes unreliable operations.[/citation]

Plus, the Ion Cannon is a lot more precise than the nuke, although give me a stealth tank over a Mammoth anyday...

Part 2: 2D, Acceleration, And Windows: Aren't All Graphics Cards Equal?

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