Video capture of FirePro V5700 vs Quadro FX 1700 with CATIA tested at Develop 3D Magazine

Greg Corke and Martyn Day of Develop 3D magazine recently supervised a series of side-by-side performance benchmarks in CATIA comparing the FirePro V5700 and the Quadro FX 1700.  The models were all high-polygon, high complexity (i.e. requiring lots of culling in shaded view) from CATBench. Both cards include 512 MB RAM and both are running on identical HP xw6600 workstations. The AMD folks were on hand with a digital camcorder to capture the results.

The test runs through three models (1.5 million, 3.9 million, and 3 million polygons) and has each rotate, tilt, and zoom in shaded, shaded plus outline, and outline-only views.

Interesting notes:  For low-polygon, low-complexity models, the Quadro FX performed as well as or better than the V5700. But as model complexity increased, the v5700 really outpaced it. I am guessing that this is due to the optimized OpenGL VBO support on the FirePro line which enables the graphics card to store the geometry on the card and even update it without having to push the geometry back down the bus to the CPU.