Thinking about getting a 3Dlabs Wildcat Realizm 500

[StefanHamminga]

This card looks to be a good mid-range card. The reviews look promising, faster than my current (problematic) Quadro FX1400.

The card is reasonable affordable (570 euros) over here, not much more than a Quadro FX 1400.

Is there anyone here that has first or secondhand experience with this card and the 3Dlabs drivers?

Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer/AI student

 

[Heckler]

I use a Wildcat VP880pro in a computer that runs both SWx & Pro/e......it's a screamer. No problems here

Best Regards,

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SW2005 SP 5.0 & Pro/E 2001
Dell Precision 370
P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400
o
_`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

Never argue with an idiot. They'll bring you down to their level and beat you with experience every time.

 

[Theophilus]

Stefan, is your problem with the FX 1400? Or is it a SolidWorks problem? A thread I started several weeks ago seemed to indicate miscellaneous graphics glitches were from SolidWorks and not my graphics card.

Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe trumps reason.

 

[StefanHamminga]

Most likely my FX 1400 has a fried vertex shader, I tried my spare (and confirmed working) windows install (even reinstalled SW on both my daily windows & my spare OS). Then I tried linux, to no avail. The card seems to crash randomly when in opengl mode, but when a program utilizes the vertex shaders it crashes instantly.

This behaviour is verifyable with the Realtech-VR OpenGL Extensions viewer, located at:

http://www.realtech-vr.com/glview/

The benchmarks & reviews on the Wildcat cards seem pretty good, but 3Dlabs announced to leave the professional graphics market and I'm a bit worried about support for newer software (Vista & SW2007 for instance).
I also e-mailed 3Dlabs about this. (no respondse yet)


Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer/AI student

 

[Theophilus]

Good luck getting a response from 3Dlabs. I had quite a problem a few years back with an Oxygen card that went bad while under warranty. Looong story--too long.

Thanks for the feedback as to the nature of your problem. Is your card very old or perhaps able to be swapped under warranty of any kind? For the price of cards like these, I expect them to far outlast any computer I'm using with them.

Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe trumps reason.

 

[StefanHamminga]

<bit of a rant>
To be honest, I believe the hardware side of the HP Quadro FX 1400 I have is the cheapest stuff they had laying around, it's a simple nVidia Geforce reference board, no modifications, the memory chips are the slowest spec'd chips I've ever seen on a Geforce 6600/6800 series card and the cooler is exactly the same as a cheapass Geforce 6600GT I had in a previous system. The only differences are the lack of an external power connector, the print (/hardware lock) on the nv42 chip and the driver mode...
You'd expect for double the money they could have at least given you memory as fast and an equal amount of it as the cheapest gaming cards... let alone the oldscool noisy cooler...

Take for example the XFX GeForce 6800 GS 256MB DDR3:
Memory speed as sold: 1,1GHz (550MHz DDR)
Default memory speed: 1,0GHz (500MHz DDR)
Amount: 256MB (GDDR3)
Bus width: 256MBit
Memory bandwidth as sold: 34,3 GB/sec
Default memory bandwidth: 31,2 GB/sec


And the HP Quadro FX 1400 (confirmed specs):
Memory speed: 600MHz (300MHz DDR)
Amount: 128MB (GDDR3)
Bus width: 256MBit
Memory bandwith: 18,75 GB/sec


Both utilize the very same nv42 core...

PNY Quadro card pic:

http://www.pchut.nl/pics/g/J9XR05.jpg

HP Quadro card pic:

http://www.sallandautomatisering.nl/content/show_image.php?image_id=21386

Inno3D 6800 LE pic:

http://pics.computerbase.de/news/10706/1_m.jpg

</bit of a rant>

Stefan Hamminga
EngIT Solutions
CSWP/Mechanical designer/AI student

 

[afb66t9]

Haven't had any problems with a Wildcat 990VP Pro. The 990VP powers two screens quite well. The line work on the screen dosn't look as sharp as my home geforce 4400ti (gaming card). I have run them side by side on my work computer, two identical 21" CRT screens. I have not seen the new realism's in action, they may be a lot more sharper.