Hi,
I want to check if my expectations of the performance of an old laptop with a Quadro card where realistic (and so I have a problem) or if I was being overly optimistic…
I have two laptops, running Windows 10/11
One is 10 years old or so, with an NVIDIA QUADRO FX 570M. The other is 4 years old with a combined Intel HD Graphics 530 and a NVIDIA GTX 950M
I assumed the Quadro, even though older, would render graphics faster than the new GTS. But instead, the Quadro is about 4 times slower. I am using Rhino 6.
I can not see if the QUADRO is being used fully because the WDDM version is 1.2, and I need WDDM 2.0 to be able to see the performance in the Windows 10 Task Manager (It seems I can not upgrade to the new WDDM).
My NVIDIA driver is version is 21.21.13.4201, dating from 2016. Windows says its up to date, which is probably correct as I recently reinstalled windows, and the NVIDIA tools and driver on the Quadro laptop.
Trying to see if a video card is “being used fully” is a fools errand. If it supports the OpenGL features being used, it’s being used.
You can just plug in the Quadro and the GTX into google and get a comparison. It may not be very scientific but it’s better than nothing, and it says the GTX is ‘insanely faster,’ and I see no reason to not believe it. Low-end Quadros are essentially a ripoff, they exist for specialized software that requires a Quadro only because it was never tested on anything else. Neither is really any good.
There is almost no way drivers from 2016 are going to work.
Hi @Grant837
If you look up the two cards, you’ll see that the Quadro has a measly 32 cuda cores compared to the more well-spec’ed GTX WITH 640 cuda cores. Neither is fit for modern day software, but as @JimCarruthers has already mentioned, the entry level Quadro cards (hell, ALL the Quadro cards!) are more of a marketing scheme than actual performance. For reference, a current generation mobile 3060 has 3840 cuda cores
-Jakob
Thanks @JimCarruthers and @Normand . While not positive news, its clear my expectations where wrong, and have now been reset.
I always thought Quadros where more powerful. I do know that at one time the old Quadro card generates smother curves than my GTX. I forget if that was in Rhino or not, but lately there does not seems to be a difference, at least in Rhino.
Hi @Grant837
Regarding the curves, you might be right - the antialiasing might be better on the quadro card. GPU rendering is a different beast, and that old Quadro is just… old. Cuda didn’t make a massive splash when launched, since not a lot of software supported it. Now almost every single render engine - both game and viz - utilizes them to full extent, and the number of Cuda cores in modern GPU’s have skyrocketed. Depending on what CPU is in the laptop, it might even be faster than the GPU? I have an (old) i7 CPU with an equally old GTX 950 card, and they perform almost identically in terms of rendering.
-Jakob
Yeah the ONE OpenGL feature Quadros had enabled that the GTXs’ did not was for quickly drawing “antialiased wires.” I don’t know if Rhino actually uses this feature even today, definitely not in the past, and it dates back to when video cards lacked the power to just brute-force antialias the whole image.
