OpenGL

Do you think that companies that are using OpenGL for programs like CAD will continue to use it or start to go towards DirectX?

And for a computer in college is it really worth having a OpenGL card verses not? It would be primarily used for CAD (95% of the time) and and design and only be used for college level projects.


What is the multiple for the increase in performance of a OpenGL card vs. a none OpenGL card?

 

DirectX has been around for 10+ years and the high end of games and CAD are still programmed in OpenGL.

 

To what extent are the cards faster in general? 3x or 4x? I am just trying to justify the 3 times higher price.

 

every card does opengl AND directx. they're just different interfaces to the same feature set: your card.

if they wouldn't have opengl, you could not play quake3 and similar opengl based games.

 

Autodesk already switched to supporting DirectX for 3dsmax instead of OpenGL

 

Every card may support opengl and 3d, but the level of support is not the same.

To answer the first question: Do you think that companies that are using OpenGL for programs like CAD will continue to use it or start to go towards DirectX?

I think they will ultimately switch over to Direct3d because it is easier to program for and the direct3d cards have reached sufficient power to perform at expected levels.

I am not sure this will be in the next couple of years...it will happen, just a little further out.

First, the difference between the two: DirectX is best at dealing in manipulating textures, Opengl s best at dealing in moving vertices.

The reason that the 3d modeling programs are still mostly opengl is inertia. The onus on making an opengl card work is on the driver maker for the card/gpu. That means these 3d modeling companies don't have to work on hardware drivers and can concentrate on the programs and features. Plus, since most new software is simply built on the old software, they will continue to use what works.

When they rewrite the software from scratch, they will consider switching to DirectX because it works and it is much easier to deal with today than in its infancy. Direct3d has come a long way since Windows XP. It is much easier to write for now.

With Opengl, the onus of writing the drivers is on the company who makes the chipset and it is much more complex. There are fewer cards made and the cost is higher.

So, it will happen because of cost eventually.

As for the value of an opengl card it you are going to being cad work, there is a noticeable difference. If you're just going to be looking at some drawings, you can go with DirectX card, but if you are going to be doing moderate to heavy rendering, it is best to go opengl.

The problem is that an opengl card is crap for games. You won't be able to play any 3d games because they don't support 3d texture acceleration.

I cannot give you a "multiple" but it will make a difference.

If I were you, what i would do is wander down to your university and chat witha professor for 10 minutes or a upper classman. People think that they would be bothering someone by doing this, but professors LOVE to talk with students or prospective students about this sort of thing. Odds are, they will beven be able to show you a side by side comparison

 

Would my Quadro FX 770m fall in that category? If so, there's no difference at all in gaming compared to it's geforce counterpart, none.

 

It'll never happen. Because Direct3D is not a portable interface, and companies like Dreamworks and such that actually do a lot of the cutting-edge development in graphics use open-source software, and Unixes and various other systems that only OpenGL is an option for. And then you start looking at things like the PS3, which is a very OpenGL-like API. Basically, anything that's 3D and is NOT made by Microsoft is OpenGL or OpenGL derived.

Besides, Direct3D gives control of the 3D API to Microsoft. OpenGL is an extensible interface. That means that if Direct3D doesn't do something, it can never do it. If OpenGL needs to do something new, they just add an extension.

Yes. There's essentially no difference in gaming between the QuadoFX and whatever it's GeForce counterpart is. What's different is it has some different hardware bits enabled that make OpenGL fly in comparison to the GeForce, especially on operations common to CAD and other similar software.

 

Yes it would. But you are right. Looks like the most recent family of GL cards has added DirectX support. Went and looked at the currect crop of gl cards from ATI too, and they all support Directx 10 now. I haven't bought a GL card for a while, so I appreciate the heads up.

Not sure how it compares to a non-gl card, but it definitely supports it. I wonder if it is done directly or in emulation of some kind.

 

I don't know if it's a strictly GL card at all. The Quadro card are exactly the same as their Geforce counterparts but tuned differently, better GL implementation indeed. This tuning doesn't seem to have any effect on performance of DirectX though. I would've been quite dissapointed if it did, considering the premium you're paying for the FX card.
Weird thing to me is that, while Autodesk advises running 3dsmax on Directx, they still advise to use a Quadro card. Maybe it's tested and supported better? I don't know, i've seen enough drivers giving issues in spite of being signed and everything. Sometimes in 3dsmax, others in Vector based drawing like illustrator or Coreldraw. I'm more and more under the impression they use it as an excuse for asking a premium while they don't deliver on their end with heavy testing etc.
Next time around i'll probably save some money and just go with a higher end Geforce card since i mainly use 3dsmax anyway.

 

there are no different cards anymore. it's mostly firmware of the card enabling the stuff, and the "business cards" (which you call GL cards here) being very high-end normally.

but a quadro and a geforce are the same, in terms of hw. they don't create different cards, that would be much too costy.

 

I'm not sure how correct that is, but the end result is significant. When it comes to 3d modeling applications.

You are right that they use the same chipsets, but the cards are different enough that something is going on here.

For example, let's take the Radeon HD 4870 (gaming card) vs the Firepro 8700. Both use the RV770 chip, have a 256 mem bus, though the Radeo memory clock is 50 mhz higher at 900 mhz.

Catia benchmarks at 19.9 fps for the Radeon and 44.95 fpr for the Firepro. Maya shows 40.12 fps with the Radeon while showing 240.2 fps for the Firepro. Yes, not a typo...that's six times faster!

It may all be in the programming of the hardware (firmware), but that's a significant difference.

 

There is no emulation. The drivers are already the abstraction layer themselves. You send OpenGL calls to the drivers, and they translate them into hardware instructions. You send Direct3D calls to the drivers, and they translate them into hardware instructions, using the exact same hardware. It's just like being able to translate either French or German into English. It doesn't mean that French is emulated if German can be translated, too.

Certain hardware is enabled in the FirePro that isn't in the Radeon itself. That is what makes OpenGL run so much faster. Like I said, they're CAD-class cards that have acceleration for certain things that industrial OpenGL apps use very commonly. They're still essentially identical cards when Direct3D is concerned... it can't/doesn't use those instructions and acceleration.

 

I love a thread where I learn something new.

Just for clarification--what do you mean with that last statement. The cad class card doesn't/can't use the Directx instruction, or the game-class card doesn't/can't use the opengl instruction.

Sorry if I am being obtuse. I deal with workstations infrequently, but I have generally directed people who wish to work with cad/3d modelling to low-end workstation cards, rather than high-end gaming cards.

Is that not correct?

 

It just means that the drivers don't or can't translate Direct3D instructions to use that hardware for whatever reason. As far as users are concerned it means that in Direct3D apps the workstation card is effectively identical to it's consumer-level counterpart, but in OpenGL (specifically CAD and 3D applications like Maya and such) the workstation card is much superior to it's consumer counterpart just like your benchmarks show. This is an effect of the OpenGL extensions being used, whereas Direct3D doesn't have that concept.

 

I think you're/we're over-simplifying things a tad.

The contention that the cards are the identical hardware just doesn't ring true to me so I'm doing a little more hunting.

Here's a fairly interesting article/video--albeit from a marketing guy.

http://tech.icrontic.com/articles/the-real-difference-between-workstation-and-desktop-gpus/

It would seem to me that there is something more going on here.

 

They aren't quite identical hardware. It's just that parts of the hardware are disabled in the consumer GPU's That, and then the supporting board past the chip itself is often packed with more features on workstation-class cards. But the actual silicon is pretty much identical. Often even just which version of a BIOS you're running is all that's different... just look at all the softmods to workstation cards that are out there. Those wouldn't exist if the silicon wasn't the same.

 

I think that's what I said in post 12, isn't it?

You had me doubting my original assumptions.

 

Thanks for the clarification so far

Am i right though in thinking that when the only 3D app i use is 3dsmax i might as well get a high end gaming card iso a Quadro or similar card?

 

Only if the 3dsmax version is the directx version--earlier versions were not.

 

Actually, they are, for most cards nowadays anyway. Like somebody else said, manufacturing different cards for the different markets is really not worth the expense, given the fact that the additional/different pieces of silicone would only make pennies of a difference in cost. However, as I recall, what is often different is the firmware that gets loaded in the cards' BIOS. I remember seeing some material somewhere on the internet about how some workstation-class cards can be turned into gaming cards, and vice versa, by reflashing their firmware. I also recall that some manufacturers then moved to block such cross-flashing using various tricks...

Now, if you suspect that there's something wrong with companies selling exactly identical hardware at vastly different price points, I would tend to agree, except that rumor has it (...) that workstation-class cards use parts that were subjected to stricter quality control, and will receive better tech support.

 

By fly how many times faster are we talking?

 

Ok.
You can still choose both types in 3dsmax but Autodesk officialy advises DirectX and says they optimize the program for it.

 

You may want to read the thread...

 

haven't looked at ati solutions for those components, actually, but at the nvidia parts. and i know that there it's just a firmware flash away to enable the cad version. always was like that. but never saw that much scaling between them.


for ati, it most likely means that hw line drawing is completely disabled for gamers, and only enabled for cad versions. when ever numbers are that far away, it's normally a software fallback on one side.

but again, it has nothing to do with opengl / directx at all. it's just a different feature set. hw doesn't care about the api

and obviously, the CAD version gpus are always quite high end. high memory performance and such. they're not cheap, why would you want cheap components then?

 

Looks at my sig

Thank you all for your help.

 

compared to the "same" version for consumers, that is.. obviously they have different targets.

but as far as i remember, one could always tweak consumer gpus into pro ones with some tools.

 

I am in 3D field apps for more than 10 years and never needed a Quadro. Geforce and even ATI work pretty well.