Could someone with muchos graphics knowledge help me prove a point?

[Cyber-Mav]

lol startup time could be effected by gfx card. ati card could be slower since the CCC uses dot net framework and has to load up extra crap.

 

[titaniumx3]

In PCMark05, on the test where you have lots of small windows flying about everywhere I noticed a substantial difference in performance when switching from a 9800 pro to an X1900 XT. I doubt you'll ever do anything as intensive as that during normal desktop usage but the point is, a faster card can make a difference in 2D.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

hmm, could have been a direct 2d test. where the cards direct x windows acceleration is tested. not too sure though.

 

[krooton]

In PCMark05, on the test where you have lots of small windows flying about everywhere I noticed a substantial difference in performance when switching from a 9800 pro to an X1900 XT. I doubt you'll ever do anything as intensive as that during normal desktop usage but the point is, a faster card can make a difference in 2D.

I'm not doubting that faster cards would make a difference when rendering multiple changing frames over a period of time, but our debate is whether the singular rendering of a standard app would be noticably changed on it's load, such as running MS Word.

There is no way a 9800 XT would render a MS Word document noticably faster than an FX 5200 would.

 

[FrankJH]

Between different generations it probably will do - ie comparing an old nvida geforce 2 GTS (to go way back) compared to a recent 7900 or something I would think that there would be noticable 2d differences just in windows , but it would be more in the aspect of picture quality and "gloss" - ie potential speed of start menu scroll affect appearing etc, or potentially in MS paperclip affects etc

Comparing an underclocked recent card with the same card at standard or oc'd speed no differnce what so ever

edit - thinking about it I wonder if having some chipset graphics with shared ram for video duties could also show noticable sluggishness - and this is potentially where oc'ing could speed it up, just in theory but I dont see why not. an underclocked mobo based graphics chip sharing fsb etc may well improve drastically in all areas given some oc'ing tweaks.........just a possibility wouldnt you all say?

 

[krooton]

Here's how it started:

General Zod wrote on 12-10-2006 12:45 PM

Soliloquy wrote on 12-10-2006 11:52 AM

Stakker wrote on 12-10-2006 11:49 AM

i dont, but it its slow on other things, i am gonna change it.

other things like what? *** GFX card would only effect graphics rendering. it shouldnt have much (in any) effect on the net / MS office / music production or even photoshop

You what? Shouldn't have much affect on Photoshop? The GFX is a very important aspect of a PC, and regardless of the backend, if a poor performance card is installed the entire experience is affected. For example, my machine instantly loads Word however after reducing the clock speeds the load time increases by a few seconds. [Takes longer to display].

Then

Soliloquy wrote on 12-10-2006 12:50 PM

i didnt say it wouldnt affect system performance, i said it shouldnt have a noticable effect. besides, if all you are doing is loading word up then a GFX card from 5 years ago would be powerful enough.

as for photoshop - as far as i'm aware it doesnt call any GPU specific instructions during image rendering. maybe the application has intergrated itself with the GPU more closely since when i used to use the program (which admittedl was a few years back)

Then this (The guy is running a 7900GT)

General Zod wrote on 12-10-2006 12:52 PM

I reduced my clock by 100Mhz and memory by 200MHz though I was troubleshooting. Try running Windows in both Safe mode and normal mode and compare the difference in display times. The HD load will remain identical but the application will take longer to display on the screen.

Then me:

kr00t0n wrote on 12-10-2006 01:03 PM

If it occured in safe mode, that would be because it isn't using the card's drivers, and just the native vga settings in XP.

As Soliloquy says, old graphics cards render it near instantly, even intergrated onboard gfx like in all our work pcs do.

He replies nonsensically:

General Zod wrote on 12-10-2006 01:15 PM

Which is precisely the point. A machine installed with high performance HD, RAM, and CPU would experience a bottleneck when displaying 2D/3D images whether in safe mode or Windows mode.

Which was responded to with:

Soliloquy wrote on 12-10-2006 01:23 PM

actually that wasnt his point - you've misinterpreted his post.

his point is that in safe mode any GFX card will display slower as it's running in a native VGA mode with no GPU chipset specific functions (et al) being called. plus more than likely no graphics card memory being utilised and the GPU clock speed throttled back as well.

safe mode is called that for a reason - it uses minimum resources to help diagnose or correct problems safely

a geforce 10 with 10GB of memory and a 9THz GPU clock speed (if such a device existed) would more than likely render the desktop at the same speed as a Geforce 2 MX

I reply:

kr00t0n wrote on 12-10-2006 01:41 PM

Exactly, safe mode put any sort of processing, graphical or not, on the cpu and cpu alone.

With any sort of gpu, be it an onboard SIS chip in a mobo, a PCI S3 Virge, a Voodoo 3, a 9800 pro, or a pair of 7900GTX's in Sli, the difference in the speed rendering of non-graphic intensive applications would be would neglible and not something to be perceived by the end user.

And he replies with this, and I lol'd:

General Zod wrote on 12-10-2006 01:50 PM

If one compares two identical machines with alternate GFX' installed [7900GT and 7950GT] then the difference is 100% noticeable when comparing side by side. Granted, its minimal however a program is considered to be loaded when displayed on the screen and if a delay within the rendering/refresh/memory dump occurs then the load times are considered slower.

Noticable difference between those two cards in the same machine?

Yeah, right, whatever

And he continued for 3 pages.

 

[Metallifux]

That's just having no drivers though. I think nearly any display adaptor nowadays with the correct drivers would perform general gui functions fully without chugging.

Ah but the OP was making a point about the gfx cards affect on 2d gfx, which clearly it does.

 

[krooton]

Ah but the OP was making a point about the gfx cards affect on 2d gfx, which clearly it does.

The thing is, if you check the convo I quoted, we never denied that it does, just that in most cases it isn't noticable.

 

[krooton]

He is certain that when he underclocked his 7900GT by around 100mhz, there was a multiple second increase in the load time.

He moaning about this quote, as I forgot to mention his card seems to be having memory issues.

Regardless, of course a faulty card will have a noticable impact on anyhting graphical, but a standard, working card, of recent enough spec, even if it is quite poor in 3d stuff, woudl still not offer any noticable loss in the rendering of a 2D windows desktop application compared to a higher end one of the same socket.

 

[Boogle]

Tell anyone arguing over Windows performance to look here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...winprog/winprog/graphics_device_interface.asp

It basically covers the GDI from a programmers perspective. This is useful - since it clearly shows advanced operations, such as rotation are performed on the CPU almost exclusively. It also shows that when something like Word displays, Word basically just sends a series of bitmaps and text to the graphics card (via the GDI) - with processing taking place on the CPU. The GPU then handles things such as moving the objects around in hardware. So displaying Word initially is almost entirely performed by the CPU.

You can see this (funnily enough) in Safe Mode. Opening an application (including initial display) is as fast in safe mode as it is in Windows normally. However, start interacting with the window where things move around and suddenly the performance is very poor. The GPU has nothing to do with initial display (even in Vista the GPU doesn't have much to do with that), the GPU is purely for manipulating the elements after they've been initially created. That rule applies to Vista as well.

There's a simpler explanation though - the aforementioned person likes to argue/is a troll.

 

[fastwunz]

Tell anyone arguing over Windows performance to look here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...winprog/winprog/graphics_device_interface.asp

It basically covers the GDI from a programmers perspective. This is useful - since it clearly shows advanced operations, such as rotation are performed on the CPU almost exclusively. It also shows that when something like Word displays, Word basically just sends a series of bitmaps and text to the graphics card (via the GDI) - with processing taking place on the CPU. The GPU then handles things such as moving the objects around in hardware. So displaying Word initially is almost entirely performed by the CPU.

You can see this (funnily enough) in Safe Mode. Opening an application (including initial display) is as fast in safe mode as it is in Windows normally. However, start interacting with the window where things move around and suddenly the performance is very poor. The GPU has nothing to do with initial display (even in Vista the GPU doesn't have much to do with that), the GPU is purely for manipulating the elements after they've been initially created. That rule applies to Vista as well.

There's a simpler explanation though - the aforementioned person likes to argue/is a troll.

cound have put it better myself - in fact - i probably coundnt have put it in the first place!

 

[krooton]

Thanks guys