Since this is my first post, I want to briefly mention how I heard of OpenGL: About 6 years ago, I was using a particle effects program called Illusion , which was running in slow motion on my Athlon 600. After installing an nVidia 64 MB GeForce card, Illusion began rendering effects just a second or two short of real time. VERY Impressive.
On to today’s issue: I was just looking at the new 2007 VGA comparison chart at Tom’s Hardware. There’s plenty of statistics available for gaming plus a handful of 3DMark results. However, no 3D rendering programs were tested.
I’m not buying a new VGA card for gaming, I’m buying it for accelerating 3D animation rendering, particularly in OpenGL based applications.
So, what I’m wondering is: how well do the gaming and 3DMark results translate to accelerating 3D / OpenGL rendering.
If a given card performs significantly better than another card in the gaming / 3DMark tests, can the same significant performance improvement be expected in 3D animation rendering applications such as Bryce, MojoWorld, and Lightwave?
Also, does anyone know of a comparison chart that focuses more on 3D apps than Gaming apps ?
Many Thanks