The Elsa Gloria II Quadro SDR
Professional Graphic Solutions for High-End 3D Applications

 May 26, 2000 - By John "Tool" Fiegener

Our Test System
An Athlon budget box...

Full Tower ATX Case w/ 300W PS, Athlon (Provided By OutsideLoop Computers) over clocked to 900MHz., MSI K7 Pro  Motherboard, 256MB of Micron PC100  SDRAM, IBM Deskstar 34GXP 20.5 GB ATA66 7200 Rpm HD, Elsa Gloria II Quadro , Sound Blaster Live value, Asus 40X CDROM, Windows NT 4.0 SP 6

 

Professional Benchmarks With The Gloria II
Bring on the contenders!

 
Here's the line up...
 
Card Memory Drivers Street Price
Elsa Gloria II Quadro 64 4.02.05.124 $643
3D Labs GVX1  32 2.15.0318 $590
3D Labs GMX 2000  96 2.12.0733 $1428
 

Ocus Pro/BENCH 20

 

click for full view

 
I personally think that the Ocus Pro/Engineer Test is the best Pro/E bench marking standard that is available to designers and engineers. It's small in size, easy to download, easy to run and his web site has a host of other benchmark results to compare your station to. Ocus is a great way to see what other stations have benched before you make the commitment to by new hardware. 

The test performs a series of repeated tasks and gives a result in seconds to perform the task. 

Here are the results of the Ocus test.

All scores measured in seconds to complete test
Task  Elsa Gloria II Quadro 3D Labs GVX1  3D Labs GMX 2000 
160 wireframe redraws  24 22 25
90 shaded mouse spins  22 36 58
400 shaded redraws 19 20 24
80 shade calculations 24 24 25
8 regenerations 26 26 25
200 menu redraws 15 14 12
60 saves 53 57 61
300 dialogue box redraws 16 15 15
180 wireframe mouse zooms 14 15 48
2 patterned x-sections 21 21 21
Family Table verify 16 15 15
Assembly creation 26 27 26
15 explode translations 20 20 27
20 screen updates 19 19 18
50 model tree expansions 11 12 12
25 automatic regenerations 16 16 15
20 perspective views 20 21 24
Total 362 380 451

 
As you can see the Quadro driven Gloria II squashed the GMX 2000, a card more than twice the cost. I was surprised the Quadro had not out performed the GVX1 given its larger memory buffer. You can see that the Quadro has a 14 second advantage over the GVX1 in the shaded mouse spin but was with in a couple of seconds on the GVX1 in all other categories. The GMX 2000 results were sad, but this is at least 2 year old technology 3D Labs should really adjust the price of the GMX.

 

SPEC Pro/ENGINEER 2000i Benchmark

 
SPEC's Pro/E 2000i test is an extensive test of the CPU and the video card. Although the test is thorough, it is long and grueling occupying the station for 1.5  to 2 hours. It took roughly 1.23 hours with Quadro on my Athlon 900. Let's get straight to the results. The tests are performed similarly to the Ocus test where the task is performed an the results are given in time to complete the task.

All scores measured in seconds to complete test.
Task Elsa Gloria II Quadro 3D Labs GVX1 3D Labs GMX 2000
Startup and Load Model 276 264 257
Wireframe 73 92 99
Wireframe-Smooth 72 153 256
Wireframe-Depth Cue 71 91 99
Shaded-Small Window 217 263 305
Shaded 249 318 363
Shaded-Clipped 395 317 411
Shaded-Transparent 257 320 365
Sub-Assy: FASTHLR-Hidden 374 442 789
Sub-Assy: FASTHLR-No Hidden 261 289 558
Sub-Assy: Shaded 130 140 294
Sub-Assy: Shaded w/Edges 224 227 503
FASTHLR-No Hidden No Skins 606 696 849
Shaded No Skins 373 424 516
Shaded w/LOD No Skins 81 67 137
Multiple Lights 58 263 314
GAUSS 331 358 589
Remaining Operations 395 351 359
Total 4443 5075 7063

 
You can see the results are close to those of the Ocus test but on a greater scale. The Quadro really excels on the shaded redraws and spins. This is evident when handling the large assemblies the Quadro was elegant on the transition as you rotated the assembly. The GVX1 and GMX 2000 had a heavier feel during rotation. The Quadro benefits from on board 50 Gflop transform and lighting engine. The Quadro stands out as the hands down winner in both the Ocus and Spec Pro/E test. The GVX1 has a very respectable showing in both test as well.

 

Solid Works, Viewperf and the rating