NVIDIA Quadro DDR

SPEC’s APC Pro/E Ver. 20

The Pro/Engineer Ver. 20 MCAD benchmark from the SPEC APC organization is a very large Pro/E test, the NT download is about 45MB in zipped form and it expands to about 240 MB of files. The run times range from one to several hours. A description from SPEC’s web page:

“SPEC/GPC's Application Performance Characterization (SPECapc^SM) project group offers performance results and free downloads for a benchmark based on Pro/ENGINEER™ Rev. 20. The model used in the benchmark is a realistic rendering of a complete photocopy machine consisting of approximately 370,000 triangles.

“The benchmark comprises 17 tests. Startup and initialization time is measured, but given no weight (0.0) within the composite score for the benchmark. There are 16 graphics tests, each of which measures a different rendering mode or features. The first three graphics tests measure wireframe performance using the entire model. The next four measure different aspects of shaded performance, using the same model. Each of these tests executes exactly the same sequence of 3D transformations to provide a direct comparison of different rendering modes. The next four tests use a subassembly, and compare the two FASTHLR modes, the default shading mode, and shaded with edges. These tests also execute a common sequence of 3D transformations. The last five graphics tests use two different instances of the model - the first three without its outer skins (to illustrate the effect of FASTHLR and level-of-detail operations), and the last two to illustrate complex lighting modes and surface curvature display. The last test is an aggregate of all time not accounted for by the previous 16 tests, and is a mix of CPU and graphics operations.

“Scores are generated for all 17 tests. Composite numbers are provided for each set of graphics tests (shaded, sub-assembly, wireframe and other) and there is an overall composite score for graphics and CPU operations. Start-up and initiation time is not included in the composite score. “

Check out the SPEC/APC site for a more complete benchmark description and sample output from a benchmark run.

The Pro/E profile was selected for the ELSA driver and the 3Dlabs drivers; the NVIDIA 3.65 driver did not have any such tuning options. Listed below are the run time results in seconds (the best times are shown in bold) obtained from this test suite:

Tests 0 through 9 -

Tests 10 through 17 -

The CL Annihilator (GeForce SDR ) with the NVIDIA 3.65 driver failed to complete the test sequence; it appeared to hang in test # 2 (Wireframe-Smooth).

Looking at these raw numbers, two things are apparent:

1) The Quadro DDR and the ELSA GLoria II (Quadro SDR ) were the fastest cards for most of the tested operations.

2) ELSA and NVIDIA need to fix the problem with their drivers that is evident when one looks at the times for test #6 (Shaded–clipped).