ELSA GLoria II Quadro SDR

Analysis/Conclusion

The Quadro and GeForce GPU’s are remarkable achievements due to NVIDIA’s ability to put a very powerful T&L engine into a single chip graphics processor.  The performance of these two units are very similar except that the wireframe feature is not enabled or implemented effectively in the GeForce GPU. Some reasonable conclusions about the GLoria II Quadro SDR card can be inferred from the test data:

- The polygon performance of the GLoria II Quadro SDR and GeForce SDR cards are about the same.  The GLperf test results, and the Indy3D Simulation and Animation results support this conclusion.

- The GLoria II Quadro SDR does not have any problems with AA lines unlike the GeForce; in fact, on the GLperf AA line test the GLoria II was the fastest card.

- For the visualization class of tasks, the GLoria II Quadro SDR and the GeForce SDR are similar in performance and are much faster than any of the other tested cards.  The test results from the Indy3D Simulation and Animation tests and Viewperf’s DX-05, Awadvs-03, and Lightscape-03 tests support this view.

- On the MCAD types of application and tasks, the GLoria II Quadro SDR was the fastest card tested. On the large model in the SPECapc Pro/E 20 test suite, the GLoria II was fastest in most of the sub tests. The GeForce has problems with AA lines and when used with the NVIDIA 3.65 driver it could not run to completion the SPECapc Pro/E Rel. 20 test or the ProCDRS-02 test.

- The GLoria II Quadro SDR does make considerable use of the host CPU as was illustrated by the test results; the up side to this is that its performance will scale as the CPU speed.  Thus it will run even faster on the new generation of fast CPU’s just coming to market.  Conversely, it might not be too good a choice to use with an older generation slower CPU.  This is a very interesting conclusion because you would think that the overhead placed on the CPU would have been offloaded almost completely onto the hardware T&L engine of the Quadro.

- The ELSA driver is a better choice to use with the GLoria II than the NVIDIA 3.65; the performance is about the same but the ELSA driver is more stable and has the tuning features that a professional user needs.  This is exactly why NVIDIA went to ELSA to manufacturer Quadro based boards and not a gaming card manufacturer like Creative Labs.

In the world of desktop systems and workstations, the best is usually the newest and the GLoria II Quadro SDR seems to live up to that standard. It is an excellent graphics card for professional applications and its competitors will have to work very hard to match or exceed its performance. 

If the advantages the Quadro holds over the GeForce don’t matter to you, then a GeForce based card may be a better overall option because of its lower cost.  Even if you go with the Quadro, the  $650 card earns its value by the incredible performance improvement it holds over previous title holders that fall in the $1000+ range.