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MillimeterTest Drive: Nvidia Quadro CX and Adobe CS4, Part 1
Jan 12, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
Nvidia Quadro CX
Last month, we compared Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4) performance on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows systems, finding that 64-bit proved superior in nearly all tests (see part 1 and part 2). This month, in our quest to identify the optimal CS4 configuration, we look at graphic chip manufacturer Nvidia’s Quadro CX technology—which, according to Nvidia’s website, “is the accelerator for Adobe Creative Suite 4—giving creative professionals the performance, tools, and reliability they need to maximize their creativity.” If you find this marketing language sufficiently compelling to press the soothing green BUY NOW button, you’ll find prices ranging from about $1,650 to $2,200, depending upon the card’s manufacturer. Obviously, maximizing your creativity doesn’t come cheap.
So, in this month’s affordable HD, I’ll analyze the Quadro CX’s performance in Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere Pro, but you’ll have to wait for the second installment for that. To provide a perspective for those results, in the first installment, I’ll present a very brief history of the graphics marketplace, describe OpenGL and detail what new OpenGL features are supported in CS4.
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A Brief History of Workstation Graphics
I started my writing career at PC Magazine, back in the day where teams of multiple reviewers would analyze 65 graphics cards from a dozen or so small vendors and proclaim an Editor’s Choice, guaranteeing vendor solvency at least until the next product cycle. At that time, most graphics card vendors produced their own graphics chips—which is as inefficient as HP, Apple, and Dell manufacturing their own CPUs.
In time, several developers of graphics processing units (GPUs) evolved—most notably Nvidia. Centralizing this product development function proved very efficient, and in relatively short order, only a few GPU vendors remained—including Nvidia, ATI, and Matrox. Those graphics vendors that didn’t get bought or go out of business used technology from one of these three companies—again, primarily Nvidia.
Through the mid-'90s, the demands of digital content creation (DCC), primarily 3D design, spawned and maintained a separate category of workstation graphics cards in addition to mainstream graphics, which focused primarily on performance with business applications and video playback. If you were doing serious DCC work back in the last century, you probably needed a high-end workstation graphics card.
Then came computer-based gaming, which spawned a mass-market need for the same type of 3D display performance at which workstation graphics excelled. The focus of mass-market GPU vendors shifted from business performance to games, producing an inexpensive range of very high-performance 3D-capable chips. These chips in hand, Nvidia started targeting the workstation market, which the company soon dominated.
Nvidia now has two primary desktop-focused, chip-based brands: GeForce for gamers and Quadro for workstations. Scratch beneath the surface, and you’ll find that the technologies are very similar. The Quadro supports some high-end 3D design functions that the GeForce doesn’t, and it offers drivers certified for critical DCC applications such as Autodesk AutoCAD and 3ds Max.
All this is a long way of saying that for the last six or seven years, you really didn’t need a high-end workstation class graphics card for Premiere Pro, Photoshop, or After Effects. As long as you had the memory to support your HD formats (usually 250MB-500MB) and dual output ports, any $300-to-$500 card would do.
So what happened with CS4 that would change that dynamic?
Continue the discussion on Crosstalk the Millimeter Forum.