Rendering Benchmarks

Rendering is the process of generating an image from a model, by means of computer programs. The model is a description of three dimensional objects in a strictly defined language or data structure. It would contain geometry, viewpoint, texture and lighting information. The image is a digital image or raster graphics image. Rendering is also used to describe the process of calculating effects in a video editing file to produce final video output. These kinds of programs and applications are very popular these days and quite extensively used in the movie and games industry.

OpenGL Performance

SPECviewperf is a portable OpenGL performance benchmark program. It was developed by IBM and later updates and significant contributions were made by SGI, Digital, 3Dlabs and other SPECopc project group members. SPECviewperf provides a vast amount of flexibility in benchmarking OpenGL performance. SPECviewperf parses command lines and data files, sets the rendering state, and converts data sets to a format that can be traversed using OpenGL rendering calls. It renders the data set for a pre-specified amount of time or number of frames with animation between frames. Finally, it outputs the results.

SPECviewperf 9 - OpenGL Results

OpenGL Results - 2560x1600 - E6300 2.80GHz - 2GB RAM
	GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB	Calibre 8800 GTX 768MB
3dsmax-04	11.49	11.82
catia-02	11.33	11.50
ensight-03	15.33	20.34
light-08	11.61	11.93
maya-02	30.46	30.51
proe-04	13.25	13.92
sw-01	14.66	14.67
ugnx-01	4.31	5.27
tcvis-01	4.20	4.73
Results Interpretation: Higher index values are better.

We installed and used SPECviewperf software to provide us some more application performance figures and rendering speed. As these are different applications that are run to compile the results these give some extra feeling about the performance of the G80 chipset. The Sparkle Calibre 8800 GTX OC edition does show some decent scores, although we have to be fair and state the same for the GeForce 8800 GTS graphics card. In the end the Calibre 8800 GTX OC edition comes out on top, which is only logic due to core being clocked at 630MHz against only 513MHz on the GeForce 8800 GTS. The raw power coming from the GPU makes the difference, and in this case that means the higher clock settings and the available stream processors. A clear and clean win for the Calibre series designed and released by Sparkle!

MACS Technology, TEC Active cooling

As the Calibre series from Sparkle use some special cooling designed and manufactured by MACS Technology, which sounds only fair to check a bit deeper on what technology they brought on board with their VGA coolers. Though, MACS Technology isn't a big company but refined products are their target and goals. Therefore, designing and producing classical products with low costs is their common view. In fact MACS Technology has been concentrating on developing thermoelectric cooling for processors, graphics card and computer cases. This thermoelectric cooling uses the Peltier effect to create a heat flux between the junctions of two different types of materials. A Peltier cooler, heater or thermoelectric heat pump is a solid-state active heat pump which transfers heat from one side of the device to the other side against the temperature gradient (from cold to hot), with consumption of electrical energy.

Because heating can be achieved more easily and economically by many other methods, Peltier devices are mostly used for cooling. Although, when a single device is to be used for heating and cooling, a Peltier device may be desirable. Simply connecting it to a DC voltage will cause one side to freeze, whilst the other side heats up. The effectiveness of the pump at moving the heat away from the cold side is totally dependent upon how well the heat from the hot side can be removed. The effect is used in satellites and spacecraft to counter the effect of direct sunlight on one side of a craft by dissipating the heat over the cold shaded side whereupon the heat is dissipated by radiation into deep space. Thermoelectric coolers are also used to cool computer components to aid overclocking. Used in conjunction with a heat sink or water block, Peltiers are capable of cooling a chip below ambient room temperature.

This technique of cooling a chip via a thermoelectric module is just what MACS Technology used with their m-Sorceress series which is used on the Sparkle Calibre 8800 GTX OC edition. And with the introduction of the GeForce 8800 series they have reworked their initial design and came up with the m-Sorceress II to cool down these new graphics cards. This TEC module, combined with the heatpipe technology is quite innovative as it takes two proven techniques to make an ever greater cooling solution. The principle behind the heatpipe technology is simple though very effective. While at one side the heat will build up and vaporize the liquid in the heatpipe, at the top it will get cooled down and condensation will occur and the liquid flows back. By applying this technique the cooling efficiency greatly improves.