3-D Without RISC

Intergraph's TDZ-400 puts two Pentium Pros to work speeding 3-D graphics

Dave Rowell

In 1994, Intergraph gambled that it could abandon RISC for multiprocessor Intel boxes and still get 3-D-workstation performance. Now comes the payoff with the Pentium Pro. Intel's new chip delivers RISC-level performance and x86 compatibility, too.

The 150-MHz Pentium Pro is fast; our BYTEmark CPU test (32-bit code) shows its integer performance is 2.1 times that of a 90-MHz Pentium, and its floating-point performance is 2.6 times faster. The 200-MHz Pentium Pro, announced after we completed these tests, should be as fast -- or faster than -- any RISC chip except Digita l Equipment's 21164 Alpha. Intergraph plans to ship a 200-MHz version of its TDZ workstation before 1996, with prices $2500 higher per CP U than the 150-MHz models.

We tested the first Pentium Pro system, a $24,195 Intergraph TDZ-400 with two 150-MHz Pentium Pro CPUs, 64 MB of RAM, a 2-GB SCSI hard drive, and a 21-inch monitor. The systems come with Windows NT 3.51, a PCI-bus GLZ graphics card, built-in Ethernet, PC Card slots, a quad-speed CD-ROM drive, and a keyboard with microphone and stereo speakers. The TDZ-300 has a single Pentium Pro, the TDZ-400 has two, and the deskside TDZ-600 has four. The new models carry slightly higher prices than the old Pentium line (around $1000 more for comparable TDZ configurations with 150-MHz Pentium Pros).

Our test configuration used Intergraph's newest 3-D card, the GLZ1T -- a GLZ1 accelerator with an added texture-processing board. In addition to 12 MB of video RAM (for double-buffered, 1152- by 864-pixel graphics with 24-bit z-buffering), the card has 8 MB of memory for storing texture maps. It has the same $8000 price as the 24-MB GLZ2 we tested in the TDZ-40 (see "3-D Gra phics Go Zoom," September BYTE). All GLZ cards support the OpenGL 3-D API under NT.

Exceeds Expectations

We were surprised by just how much the Pentium Pro boosted the TDZ-400's 3-D graphics performance. The TDZ-400 ran the OpenGL Performance Characterization Committee's Viewperf 3.0 test 2.5 to 13 times faster than the TDZ-40 with two 100-MHz Pentiums and ran the rendering tests with Bentley Systems' MicroStation three to four times faster (not shown).

Based on the BYTEmark tests, the floating-point speed difference between a 100-MHz Pentium and a 150-MHz Pentium Pro is 134 percent (2.3 times), while the GLZ1T's texture processing provides only a 15 percent boost (based on Intergraph's tests). Intergraph attributes the gain to the Pentium Pro's floating-point speed, better memory architecture (i.e., interleaving, an integrated L2 cache, and a more efficent CPU bus), and improved OpenGL drivers for its GLZ cards. Intergraph's Mogle, a multithreading OpenGL driver for the Micr oStation, provided a 5 percent to 50 percent performance boost by putting both processors into play.

Intergraph cast its lot with promising standards: x86 compatibility, PCI, Windows NT, and OpenGL. For 3-D visual computing applications like mechanical CAD, it's a winning combination.

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PRODUCT INFORMATION

TDZ-400.......................$24,195
(two 150-MHz Pentium Pros, 64 MB of RAM, GLZ1T 3-D graphics card, 2-GB hard drive, 21-inch monitor)
Intergraph Computer Systems
Huntsville, AL
(800) 763-0242
(205) 730-5441

http://www.intergraph.com

Circle 1139 on Inquiry Card.

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3-D Performance with Viewperf 3.0

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With two 150-MHz Pentium Pros, the TDZ-400 easily bests a TDZ-40. Viewperf 3.0 is a single-threaded test of overall 3-D graphics performance: CPU, memory subsystem, and graphics subsystem, but not disk I/O.

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Low-Slung, High-Powered

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Inside that low-slung b ox, the TDZ-400 packs two 150-MHz Pentium Pros and Intergraph's high-performance GLZ graphics card.

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Dave Rowell is a BYTE technical editor. You can contact him on the Internet or BIX at drowell@bix.com .