Video Card and Hardware Benchmarks

[Lin Evans]

I'm pinning this because there are lots of questions about whether this or that video card, system, CPU or laptop will have enough GPU power to run animations, pans, etc., smoothly. Here is a very complete set of benchmarks, updated frequently, where you can get a feel for how the video card in the computer you plan to purchase will perform. There are also benchmarks for systems, CPU and hard drives!

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

Click on the link above and find your card. These are divided into top, middle and low performance charts. Click on one of the charts to see closeups. Go to the white reference chart, enter the video card manufacturer name and number in the search field. Once you have it located, copy down the G3D performance rating and report back and someone here will help you determine how it fares. You can also see the video card's "ranking" among all tested. The lower the number, the better performance you may expect.

As of today (September 5, 2009) 694 different video cards have been tested and results posted.

As of July 2018 over 1,000,000 different video cards have been tested and results posted.

Best regards,

Lin

[EOSPete]

As ever Lin your information is valuable. Many thanks

Peter

[Conflow]

Hi Lin,

May I submit a word of caution concerning 'Passmark-Software' which is used to rate Video-Cards (Your-Link suggestion).

We have used this program rating here in our Workshops and although it may give an accurate rating for "Plug-in" Video-Cards

we have found that its way off the mark when it comes to 'Intergrated-Graphic Systems' tied into Multi-Core Processors PCs

such as manufactured by Intel and used by Hewlett-Packard and other Laptop vendors.

Modern 'Intergrated Graphic-Systems' are surprisingly functional and efficient mostly because they have direct access to the

cache-memory of the Multi-Core Processors. With Windows.7 most modern 'Multi-Core Intergrated Systems' can way outperform

the vast majority of Plug-In Graphic-Cards available today. The exceptions are those 'Hi-End Cards' costing $XXXX which demand

a more robust PC Power-Module adding to the costs ~ most PC owners forget about that !!

The problem with most of these Benchmark-Programs is that they tend to be 'absolute' and ignore 'usage-application' and product

category. There is one hell of a difference between a Volkswagen and a Ferrari ~ boths cars are designed for different purposes

and having said that, its a pity Passmark-Software does not make that differentiation.

Brian (Conflow).

[Lin Evans]

Hi Brian,

Good "head's up." The G3D numbers are just a relative indication of what one might expect. I only use them to exclude some cards from consideration. For example, if the rating is 300 on one and 2600 on another, it's a pretty good bet that the one with a 300 rating isn't going to be able to handle a PTE application with heavy use of masks and animation demanding smooth execution which the one with 2600 will handle about anything PTE can throw at it.

Some of the integrated cards are just fine as you say. The only caveat is that when one starts using and sharing resources with the CPU, how well the system will perform depends partly on how heavy the loading is on the CPU and what's being shared. With the dedicated cards, the hardware rendering concept gives the user a bit more probability of a good outcome when system resources are taxed because "most" software doesn't use the GPU that heavily. PhotoShop CS5 is now using hardware rendering, but people will generally not be playing a slideshow "and" using Photoshop simultaneously.

I have a fairly large database of the performance with my test files on relatively new integrated systems. I generally tell people who are anticipating doing heavy masks and mixing video with stills and animation and are in the market for a new video card to not consider anything with less performance than my old nVidia 8800 GT. I have a friend who used a high end MacIntosh which has a card rated #73 (from the top down) while my old nVidia 8800GT is rated #114. My card (on my old Dell with XP home and maxed out on RAM for XP) actually outperforms his Mac on the same test files for smoothness, etc. So you are correct that the numbers are not always indicative of exactly what to expect, but they still are about all we have in general to work with right now. The post was made back in 2009 and there have been some major changes since then.

One thing I do know for certain is that if you have a card which consistently scores above 2000 on the G3D it will be just fine for anything we have managed to throw at it yet. An excellent buy is the Radeon HD 6850 which sells for around $140 U.S.D. and has sufficient power to handle anything PTE can throw at it. Of course, as you note, one must have a power supply up to the task. I had to shoehorn a 750 watt power supply in my Dell to handle my 8800 GT. I'll probably eventually buy the HD 6850 which I've tested, and put my 8800 GT in my Gateway along with an upgraded power supply. The 8800 GT is absolutely silent and never produces any heat under the loads I throw at it, but I'm noticing that adding "some" multiple videos in separate slides seems to be yet another issue for the old 8600 GT which "used" to be pretty smooth on everything. Since PTE incorporated masking, the loading has greatly increased. When one adds video "and" masking it begins to tax the system.

Best regards,

Lin

[Conflow]

Lin,

I absolutely agree with you and many thanks for the very accurate 'overview' which you gave ~ I hope others will take it on board when buying !!!

For others...

Concerning "Intergrated Pc/Laptop Systems" its always advisable to purchase "Top of the Range Products" like Asus -Acer -Hewlett Packard etc;

for the reason that there are no 'latency' delays between the (intergrated) Processors and the VGA-System and to ensure that the (intergrated)

Cache-Memories are way larger than conventional PC-Cache Memory consequently the Read/Write speeds are some 5-10 times faster than normal PC's.

Having said that ~ "you cant make a Pig out of a Sows Ear" ~ and to get those speed benefits you need to get the best 'Intergrated Laptop Product'.

Someday they will make Desktops like this which perform like Ferrari's

All the best...

Brian.

[fh1805]

Just to reinforce the point made by Brian (and acknowledged by Lin) that these performance numbers don't give the whole story. Earlier this year I had need to buy a replacement desktop system. The new system has the nVidia GeForce 210 fitted (rated at just 204 in these charts). The old desktop had a GeForce 8600GS (rated at 246). Not a lot of difference in performance there; but the 210 can handle animated video sequences that are more complex than those the 8600GS just couldn't handle.

I suspect that one of the secrets of good graphics performance is to give the graphics processor plenty of memory. My 210 has got 1GB. The 8600GS had only 256MB. It is pretty much a "truism" in computing that the first system bottleneck that most machines encounter is a shortage of memory. Most processors these days (main and graphics) have the basic "grunt" to handle whatever you throw at them - provided they have enough memory to do the job.

regards,

Peter

[Barrie]

I am having to update my laptop to do HD - (need a laptop as I travel with my shows and have been offered two Dell laptops with the same graphics card NVidia Ge Force GT 729M 2GB and would appreciate you advice on whether either would be powerful enough. It got a rating of 562,

The CPU's are the Intel Core i5-4300U (1.9Ghz 3M Cache) with a rating of 3717 and the Intel Core i7-4600U (2.1Ghz 4M Cache) with a rating of 4329.

Obviously cost is an issue so the question is, will either of these be good enough to run a fairly labour intensive HD show with minimal video.

Thanks for your help.

Regards

Barrie

[davegee]

Barrie,

The usual advice is to take one of your most demanding shows to the Laptop on a Memory key and ask for a demo with it.

BTW this is an old thread?

DG

[Barrie]

Agree that would be ideal but unfortunately they don't keep them in stock in any of our local stores so it is a matter of buying it untried.

Thanks

Barrie

[davegee]

Sort of guessed that.

DG

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Agree that would be ideal but unfortunately they don't keep them in stock in any of our local stores so it is a matter of buying it untried.

Thanks

Barrie

Hi Barrie

My last laptop I had custom made in the UK, maybe you can source a company in SA, or check with other custom builders what the cost would be. The company I used PC Specialists has a wizard on their web site where you can configure what you want & it will come up with a price. Whether they will ship to SA I don't know, maybe a US company would be nearer. The URL for PCS is

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/tablets/voyager/ You could also use the spec' PCS comes up with to hawk around your local specialists.

Yachtsman1.

[Barrie]

That sounds like a good idea to me. Would you mind telling what specs you went with so I can use that as a starting point.

Thanks

Barrie

[Guest Yachtsman1]

That sounds like a good idea to me. Would you mind telling what specs you went with so I can use that as a starting point.

Thanks

Barrie

Hi Barrie, my laptop is coming up to 3 years old, so would not be to current specs, I'll see if I can dig it out & post it on here. The main things to concentrate on for use with AV are the graphics card & CPU. PCS's wizard allows you to choose from a selection if what you choose isn't compatable it will tell you.

Yachtsman1.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Barrie

I found my old spec, when I replace this one I would adopt for the highest spec cooling, the NVidia card doesn't half chuck some heat out, I would also go for the biggest screen which gives a bigger case to cram everything in. The reason why is after running it for around 3 hours showing AV or commercial DVD it gets quite hot, hotter than any other regular LT I've had.

Yachtsman1.

LT spec.pdf

[Barrie]

Thanks very much. This is great, it goves me somethign to work with.

Have a great weekend.

Kind regards

Barrie