FireGL 1000 Pro
by Diamond
The FireGL 1000 Pro is based on the 3Dlabs Permedia 2 chipset. The tested card came with 8MB of 100MHz SGRAM. The box claims that the card supports acceleration for OpenGL, Direct3D and HEIDI.
First Impression
I was interested in how this card performed. It was touted as “Premium 2D/3D performance for professional graphics”. I didn’t expect the card to cater to the game crowd, but I did expect the card to perform pretty well, and after some tweaking and a update of the drivers it did indeed perform well.
Installation
Installation of the FireGL was a snap. I popped the card into a available PCI slot and it fired right up. Drive installation was a breeze. I did notice that the FireGL doesn’t install the usual Diamond InControl Tools. This, in my opinion, is a boon since more software running is more software that can cause a problem and gum up the system. The ease of installation was refreshing after my little battle with the Viper V330. I did allow the BIOS to assign the card a IRQ so if you are having problems getting this card to work, check to see if your BIOS is assigning an interrupt to the card.
A little note, get the latest drivers from Diamond if you want to run Quake II with the card. The drivers that shipped with the card didn’t seem to allow support QpenGL in Quake, however when I downloaded the latest Quake ran just fine. The FireGL 1000 also worked just great with my Righteous 3D card after driver updates for both devices.
Performance
The usual tests were run using Winbench 3D 98 and Winbench 98. The FireGL 1000 Pro scored a 112 on the 3D bench, and a 68.6 on the Business Graphic Winmark. These aren’t impressive scores compared to the Viper V330 especially in the 3D performance category. However this card isn’t targeted at the game market, it is targeted more towards the professional graphics market. The 3D score doesn’t reflect the fact the FireGL 1000 way outperformed the Viper in several tests that I can only assume would be used if you were looking for realtime 3D output, say in a CAD program.
When attempting to get the FireGL to run Quake 2 with some sort of 3D acceleration I met with barrier. I was unable to get it to run in 3D mode. I also experienced problems getting the FireGL to work with my 3Dfx based Righteous 3D, but after a driver update for the FireGL I was able to get it to run Quake in OpenGL mode and with the 3Dfx. The card’s display quality in Quake was respectable, not as good as the Viper, and not nearly as good as a 3Dfx card, but far better than nothing. The card completed the test level in 57.5 seconds at 12.0 fps under OpenGL.
The Verdict
The FireGL 1000 Pro is clearly not targeted at the game market, and as such doesn’t kick out the performance in this area. The card is targeted at the professional graphics market. However it did perform acceptably, and with a driver update Quake II ran just fine. If you require a card that will give you on the fly rendering in your 3D program, as well as a little game playing, the FireGL should suffice; but do go to Diamond’s web site to get the newest version of their drivers.
Final note: All tests were run using the distribution drivers, except for the Quake II test which was run using the latest drivers available from Diamond.
3D Benchmark 112
Business Graphics Winmark 68.6
FPS in Quake 12
Product Price (suggested retail) $200