Image Quality Preview of NVIDIA Quadro2 with SPECviewperf   tnaw_xtennis

Quadro2, NVIDIA's video chip designed for use with professional graphics applications, has
been introduced on the late of July this year. Comes with NVIDIA's second generation GPU
that delivers 31 million triangles per second and one gigapixel per second rendering power,
Quadro2 should result in very fast performance undoubtedly. Besides frames per second performance,
image quality and accuracy is another aspect no less important for a professional graphics card.
In this preview, there is an initially look into the Quadro2's image quality. Though Quadro2 cards
aren't on retail shelves yet, thank for the method of Quadro2 mod for GeForce2 that enable us to
do the preview in advance.

Comparing with games, the demand of image quality and accuracy for professional graphics
applications is much more rigour. Figure 1 below shows the accuracy flaws ( indicated by arrow )
found during the image quality assessment and verification for several pro graphics cards in this
preview. For pro graphics, these flaws may destroy model integrity. While the flaws like these in
games are not any detriment from a point of gamers, they even have never been found and noticed
by most of gamers.

Figure 1.

Magnifying glass instructions: Move mouse to move lens; Click and drag Horizontally to change
lens size; Click and drag Vertically to change magnification; Right-Click to change lens shape

We used the popular SPEC ( Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. ) Viewperf benchmark test
program for image quality assessment and verification. SPECviewperf measures the 3D rendering
performance of systems running under OpenGL. It represent the performance in six high-end graphics
applications. In each test of the all 52 tests, a Full-screen and a small-portion images are captured
automatically by SPECviewperf for the purposes of visual quality assessment and verification.

The images listed below are representative small portion captures of different pro graphics cards
during Viewperf test. These .jpg images were obtained by transformation of original .png format
capture pictures and 4x enlargement for compare facilely.

Table 1. Small portion captures of ProCDRS tests of Intense 3D Wildcat 4210, Intense 3D
Wildcat 4110, ELSA Gloria II Pro, nVidia GeForce2 GTS, 3Dlabs Oxygen VX1, Quadro2 Pro,
Quadro2 MXR and Quadro DDR graphics cards

( click to a detail screen captures comparison table )

( click to a detail screen captures comparison table )

Table 2. Some small portion captures of AWadvs and DRV tests of  Intense 3D Wildcat 4210,
ELSA Gloria II Pro, Quadro2 Pro, 3Dlabs Oxygen VX1

Doing a detail comparison, attention to those portions indicated by arrows as shown in Fig. 1 and Table 2,
here we got some results:
1. all the NVIDIA based card, Quadro, Quadro2 and GeForce2 GTS, have identical image quality and
accuracy in the SPECviewperf test.
2. the image inaccuracies of these cards appeared during the SPECviewperf test are mainly pixel flaws
( as indicated by arrows in Fig. 1 ). Though pixel flaws were found on all the cards in this or that section
of the tests, all the cards succeed to meet the SPECviewperf standards of quality just as reported in the
viewperf.log files of ProCDRS tests.
3. Wildcat 4210, Wildcat 4110 and 3Dlabs VX1 have somewhat fewer flaws than the NVIDIA based
cards.

One thing must be mentioned and NVIDIA based card owners should be extremely pleased is that the
image quality and accuracy of NVIDIA cards in pro graphics applications are getting better and better
with the improvement of NVIDIA driver. With latest drivers by December 01, 1999, it was reported
by Anand Lal Shimpi that "In our tests, the GeForce came out with around a 1% error for each test while
our GVX1 test card averaged very close to 0.0%. While 1% may not seem like a lot, 1% in the design of
a complex building or mechanical part can be the difference between a successful one and a failing one."
On January 25th, 2000, with improved NVIDIA driver ( Detonator 3.65 ), Gary Jones reported a more
gleeful results, "In general the GVX1 and VX1 had somewhat fewer flaws than the Quadro DDR, the
ELSA GLoria II Quadro SDR and the GeForce SDR.", and the small portion screen captures of one of
the tests is shown by Fig. 2.

Figure 2. NVIDIA cards with Detonator 3.65 driver and 3Dlab cards with latest drivers by that time.

Table 3. NVIDIA cards with Detonator 6.18 driver

Now, NVIDIA driver comes to ver. 6.18. Table 3 shows the screen captures under the same test of
Fig. 2 we got using this latest driver. It is very clear that the image quality of NVIDIA cards has been
improved once again with a great leap. We are sure with the continual improvement of NVIDIA driver
it wouldn't take long time for the image quality of NVIDA pro graphics cards attain to the excellent levels.

Links of Turning your GeForce/GeForce2 into a Quadro/Quadro2 click!