SPECapc maya 6.5 8800GTS vs 4870 - poor result

[ripclaw]

Hi guys,

maybe one of you has an idea what's going on, it's driving me crazy. I went and updated my system with a 4870 from a old 8800GTS, hoping to boost performance in Maya a bit. Not so, it is actually slower than the 8800! wtf?

The full results are here: link

In short: Overall SPECapc result for the 8800: 3.34, for the 4870: 3.00

ATI Driver was 8.8.

* ripclaw is not happy at all

[Quel]

I think I may be able to answer this only since my laptop is a T60p that I use with similar programs for mathematics (texturing for presentation.)  Really it comes down to the maturity of the drivers, especially with ATI/AMD.  When I got my laptop the FireGL V5250 ran fast and appropriate right away with the initial drivers, which was unlike my desktop with a x800 pro.  When that card first came out the drivers I used were the standard "gaming" drivers and it wasn't till the FireGL X3 (workstation x800pro) drivers had came out that I got decent performance in non-gaming 3D applications.   So i'd give your 4870 a little time, especially wait until the FirePro 3D V8700's(4870) and V7700's(4850) are completely supported in Maya.

Nvidia does their drivers in different batches... not sure if your performance has changed with your 8800.  But from what I understand the NV Team's workstation department and gaming department are more integrated than ATI's.  This has been good and bad in the past...  ATI usually has better initial support and once it works, they're done.  NV on the otherhand is a little more random depending on the application, they tend to "tweak" more.  I can explain more if you'd like.. but i'd rather not bore you with the politics of gaming/workstation cards

[ripclaw]

I ran into a couple more incompatibilities, I think for the time being I rather go back to my 8800 and wait half a year or so before I give the ATI a try again. It sure was fast in games, but the drivers are certainly not in any shape to be used on a productive system. Sadly.

[Quel]

well the workstation equivalent of the 4870/50 is being released this month... so i'd give it another try when 8.9 comes out, it should be mirroring with the release of the 2 cards v8700/7700  And like my M86, when they did release the drivers, they were solid.

[ripclaw]

I ran my inital tests with version 8.8, afterwards tried 8.9 beta which caused another drop in the results. It was beta of course, but didn't really raise my hope for the release. For the moment I'm in the lucky situation that a co-worker who is a gamer mostly will take the card off me, so I'm not losing anything. I will get by with the 8800 for the moment and will monitor the next few driver releases and maybe buy another 4870 at a later time. Or get the FireGL. Will be interesting to see the gaming performance of those cards.

[Quel]

On my T60p with the V5250 (x1700) the card always performed very close to the x1700 with the exception that the card was intentionally underclocked to reduce heat as it's a relatively small *14"* laptop.  It is also expected that the 4870 firegl will have 2gb of ddr5 so there might actually be an increase in performance in that case.  I'm still pretty certain that all workstation cards are the same or similar architectually and that the major changes come with the software/drivers.

[ripclaw]

Update on the story: I have a GTX 260 (XFX 260 XXX) sitting here, with the latest nvidia drivers. System stayed the same otherwise and the results are pretty much right in the middle (Score 3.15) between the 4870 and the 8800GTS - the 8800GTS still being the fastest. This leaves only the conclusion that either the drivers are just much less mature - or that both ATI and nvidia have crippled their consumer cards even further to make sure they can sell their pro line for a premium.

[Quel]

that wouldn't be a big surprise to me that they'd gimp their mainstream drivers for maya and such.  It's happenned before...  Anyone out on the Maya forums know any tricks to make the newer cards go faster?  I really believe that the problem you are having is completely driver related.  Give ATI some time though they often dont optimize their drivers for specific programs till their Fire series gets released... another story completely with NV