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

[Bolbi]

It would be great if the benchmark tool was made available on a third-party hosting site (like FileHippo).

 

[Guest]

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 47847 chars/sec
Line: 42735 lines/sec
Polygon: 10395 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 9355 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 11091 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 9210 operations/sec
Stretching: 731 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 38388 splines/sec
Score: 1975

BENCHMARK: DIB-BUFFER AND BLIT

Text: 33378 chars/sec
Line: 120192 lines/sec
Polygon: 20675 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 2499 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 28620 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 8903 operations/sec
Stretching: 986 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 42463 splines/sec
Score: 2571

Phenom II 955 at 3.7 GHz, pair of 4770s in Crossfire, 8 GB DDR2-800, Cat 10.1, Windows 7 Home Premium x64, Aero on, nothing special.

The results from everyone seem interesting. Something feels weird about it all.

 

[suretma]

WIN XP on AMD Turion X2 TL-58 @ 1.9ghz ATI Radeon X1250.

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 39032 chars/sec
Line: 40672 lines/sec
Polygon: 10941 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 1388 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 3285 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 6666 operations/sec
Stretching: 169 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 20513 splines/sec
Score: 1244

 

[eyemaster]

I LOL'd when I saw the Voodoo results in the bitmap strech benchmark! Maybe that's how 3D acceleration worked back then?

 

[coldmast]

X2 3800+, Geforce 6100 (on-board), Windows XP Pro SP3. [Work computer]

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE
Text: 159744 chars/sec
Line: 39246 lines/sec
Polygon: 1084 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 626 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 4179 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 1534 operations/sec
Stretching: 149 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 15647 splines/sec
Score: 2496

BENCHMARK: DIB-BUFFER AND BLIT
Text: 41322 chars/sec
Line: 41322 lines/sec
Polygon: 7359 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 936 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 10140 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 871 operations/sec
Stretching: 154 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 19732 splines/sec
Score: 1277

 

[Guest]

Where is the download link?

 

[Guest]

HD5750 Win7-32 Aero

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 31686 chars/sec
Line: 32300 lines/sec
Polygon: 1093 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 6103 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 2503 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 8280 operations/sec
Stretching: 516 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 3590 splines/sec
Score: 955

BENCHMARK: DIB-BUFFER AND BLIT

Text: 26738 chars/sec
Line: 82237 lines/sec
Polygon: 11687 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 1197 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 16393 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 5337 operations/sec
Stretching: 665 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 34662 splines/sec
Score: 1743

 

[audioee]

[citation][nom]Straatkat[/nom]Where is the download link?[/citation]
Agreed. I must be blind. I can't find it either.

 

[coldmast]

We need a real world redraw test in Illustrator with an object that contains (insanely) complex lines, curves, shapes, and fills; how else can we really determine the actual impact of 2D acceleration. As well as a real world test in Excel since it was mentioned in regards to very large tables (complete with fills and lines). Also I agree with others to add some "professional" graphics cards (usually for video processing and 3D CAD) into the mix to see how they fair in comparison (or would that be opening up a whole new can of worms).

keep up the great work Tom's. (wow! check out my Text output to visible device, maybe I should dub thine computer the 'textinator')

 

[coldmast]

If you'd like to try out our Tom2D benchmark for yourself, it's available right here. The mirror is on our German site, but you'll just need to click Download, and then select the Download-Server Nr.1.

it's available right here
http://www.tomshardware.com/de/download/Tom2D,0301-26150.html

you'll just need to click Download, and then select the Download-Server Nr.1.

 

[Guest]

Win 7 (Aero) / HP 8530w / t9600 / Quadro FX 770M 512MB GDDR3
All updates to 15Feb10, driver revision (per GPU-Z) 8.17.11.9562
======
BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 23574 chars/sec
Line: 16419 lines/sec
Polygon: 2555 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 1242 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 4953 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 4248 operations/sec
Stretching: 655 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 13716 splines/sec
Score: 793

Interesting note, the "copy to clipboard" functionality doesn't output the info in the same order as the app displays it...

 

[audioee]

I have an old FireGL8800 in XP that I will test when I find the download.

 

[Onus]

This puts the kibosh on any HD5xxx upgrade plans until the fix is in the publicly available drivers. Let the itching begin...

 

[falchard]

lol talk about an ATI hit piece. Who really cares about directDraw performance that hasn't been updated for new hardware in years? It doesn't even matter in 2D digital art like Photoshop since that will be done through CPU or OpenCL.

 

[knowom]

[citation][nom]rickzor[/nom]Wow, voodoo4 actually made better than newer gpu proposals in some tests, despite the fact that it was running under win98.[/citation] Yeah that's embarrassing for both Nvidia and Ati really that a Voodoo4 managed to win a test despite using windows 98 and being over a decade old video card.

Then again you have to wonder if some of the newer cards may have faired better if they had windows 98 drivers as well. It's certainly a more minimal OS compared to the others.

 

[hixbot]

[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]
hah, C&C reference! nice one..

 

[Guest]

Window XP, E8400, 8600 GT
BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 357143 chars/sec
Line: 45276 lines/sec
Polygon: 18198 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 6633 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 4113 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 5387 operations/sec
Stretching: 496 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 12549 splines/sec
Score: 5434

 

[snemarch]

Then again you have to wonder if some of the newer cards may have faired better if they had windows 98 drivers as well. It's certainly a more minimal OS compared to the others.

Unlikely - it's probably a case of the Voodoo4 driver actually using an accelerated codepath for the StretchBlt operation, whereas recent drivers for recent cards only have relatively few accelerated operations, and fall back to the default MS (software) code for most operations.

It's been a while since I looked at the kernel-mode GDI part, but iirc it's implemented with miniport-kind of drivers that can override implementation as they see fit, and use system-default implementation for the rest.

Kinda weird to choose not to accelerate operations that should be no-brainer simple to implement... BitBlt, StretchBlt, FillRect and possibly Polygon GDI calls should all be fairly easy to do on 3D hardware.

 

[WyomingKnott]

So, a question: If I have a nice new i5 system, with no on-board graphics, what should I buy if I want nice 2-d performance?

 

[gwolfman]

[citation][nom]pithagor[/nom]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.[/citation]
Quadro FX 3800: Win7 64-bit

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 36258 chars/sec
Line: 62946 lines/sec
Polygon: 4688 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 8536 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 13661 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 7032 operations/sec
Stretching: 1015 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 27579 splines/sec
Score: 1777

==============================
==============================

BENCHMARK: DIB-BUFFER AND BLIT

Text: 33223 chars/sec
Line: 110701 lines/sec
Polygon: 20047 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 2302 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 26925 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 9621 operations/sec
Stretching: 887 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 27382 splines/sec
Score: 2321

 

[Guest]

1) Radeon 9800XT, Windows XP, Pentium 4 Northwood 2.8GHz with HT.


BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 5643 chars/sec
Line: 28069 lines/sec
Polygon: 19200 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 2249 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 3950 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 18077 operations/sec
Stretching: 103 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 15309 splines/sec

Score: 985

BENCHMARK: DIB-BUFFER AND BLIT

Text: 14676 chars/sec
Line: 23299 lines/sec
Polygon: 3285 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 481 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 5280 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 349 operations/sec
Stretching: 66 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 13278 splines/sec

Score: 608

2) Matrox G450, Windows XP, Ahtlon 64 3000+ socket 754
1280*1024 32 bit

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 2282 chars/sec
Line: 13753 lines/sec
Polygon: 2623 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 685 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 4886 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 1808 operations/sec
Stretching: 26 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 9524 splines/sec

Score: 368

BENCHMARK: DIB-BUFFER AND BLIT

Text: 17206 chars/sec
Line: 39185 lines/sec
Polygon: 5917 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 733 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 8489 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 292 operations/sec
Stretching: 73 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 18392 splines/sec

Score: 878


3) Nvidia 8600GT, Vista x64 (Aero), Core 2 Duo E6320 (1.86GHz)
1680 * 1050 32 bit

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 28313 chars/sec
Line: 33252 lines/sec
Polygon: 12931 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 2006 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 14318 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 4462 operations/sec
Stretching: 295 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 21317 splines/sec

Score: 1334


BENCHMARK: DIB-BUFFER AND BLIT

Text: 21949 chars/sec
Line: 48876 lines/sec
Polygon: 10042 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 1158 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 14053 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 4851 operations/sec
Stretching: 298 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 22614 splines/sec

Score: 1282

 

[Guest]

Anyone wants to test the Atom280 VS the Atom N450 in this test?
Thanks!

 

[Guest]

Geforce4 Ti4400, AMD SEMPRON 1.8 GHz, 768 GByte RAM, WinXP Pro SP3

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 106610 chars/sec
Line: 27747 lines/sec
Polygon: 5631 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 4324 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 8840 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 1637 operations/sec
Stretching: 154 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 15237 splines/sec
Score: 2023

Better than my (new) HD4650. Embarassing ...

 

[cutterjohn]

Mobility Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3
Vista 32(Aero) 4GB DDR2-800 P8600 @ 2.4GHz
[EDIT]Catalyst 9.12[/EDIT]


BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 32787 chars/sec
Line: 42517 lines/sec
Polygon: 15396 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 2179 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 14939 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 4300 operations/sec
Stretching: 503 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 25833 splines/sec
Score: 1552

BENCHMARK: DIB-BUFFER AND BLIT

Text: 24062 chars/sec
Line: 59406 lines/sec
Polygon: 8558 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 827 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 11606 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 5058 operations/sec
Stretching: 434 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 26199 splines/sec
Score: 1334

 

[audioee]

Pentium 4 2.6GHz, 512MB Ram, ATI FireGL 8800 AGP 128MB

I didn't turn any services off.

BENCHMARK: DIRECT DRAWING TO VISIBLE DEVICE

Text: 52466 chars/sec
Line: 31895 lines/sec
Polygon: 17070 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 2274 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 6987 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 10322 operations/sec
Stretching: 106 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 17976 splines/sec
Score: 1561

BENCHMARK: DIB-BUFFER AND BLIT

Text: 20912 chars/sec
Line: 26743 lines/sec
Polygon: 6173 polygons/sec
Rectangle: 823 rects/sec
Arc/Ellipse: 7618 ellipses/sec
Blitting: 368 operations/sec
Stretching: 74 operations/sec
Splines/Bézier: 14004 splines/sec
Score: 808