It’s been nearly a year since we last took an in-depth look at viewport performance with the help of SPEC’s SPECviewperf, and with the recent release of its 2020 v3.1 update, we felt now was a good time to generate some fresh numbers. As an added bonus, this article marks the first time we’ve run the same tests under Linux. That proved to be a good move, as it gave this article’s results more flavor.
For those not familiar with SPECviewperf, it’s important to note the fact that it is not the benchmark. It’s instead the tool for benchmarking viewports in individual applications, like 3ds Max, SolidWorks, and Siemens NX. To make the magic happen, SPEC captures API traces of the full versions of said applications, and creates viewsets that replicate playback – without the native application needing to be installed.
SPECviewperf’s ability to test viewports without the native application being installed is a huge boon for a couple of reasons. For starters, it means benchmarkers don’t need to secure licenses of these applications to test them, and it also means that they can be tested under Linux, where a handful are not even available. Why test them there, then? Because we get to see how Linux’s graphics system compares to Windows in a fair manner.
We sometimes bundle our own Blender viewport testing in our SPECviewperf articles, but we’re going to dedicate this one entirely to SPEC’s benchmark, and use the upcoming Blender 3.3 release to test the viewport both in Windows and Linux – for the first time since 2.92.
Before jumping into our latest SPECviewperf numbers, here are the GPUs tested, along with their framebuffer sizes, and driver versions used:
| Graphics Cards Tested |
| AMD Radeon Pro & Radeon: AMD Radeon Pro W6800 (32GB; $2,249) AMD Radeon Pro W6600 (8GB; $649) AMD Radeon Pro W6400 (4GB; $229) AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (16GB; $999) AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (16GB; $649) AMD Radeon RX 6800 (16GB; $579) AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT (12GB; $479) AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT (8GB; $379) AMD Radeon RX 6600 (8GB; $329) AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT (4GB; $199) NVIDIA Quadro & GeForce: NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 (24GB, $3,999) NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB, $899) NVIDIA TITAN RTX (24GB, $2,499) NVIDIA RTX 3090 (24GB, $1,499) NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti (12GB, $1,199) NVIDIA RTX 3080 (10GB, $699) NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti (8GB, $599) NVIDIA RTX 3070 (8GB, $499) NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti (8GB, $399) NVIDIA RTX 3060 (12GB, $329) NVIDIA RTX 3050 (8GB, $249) |
The biggest omission in our current-gen graphics card collection is that we do not have any Ampere-based workstation GPUs from NVIDIA. This is unfortunate, but not the end of the world, as we can still piece together where the cards would perform based on the previous-gen Turing-based Quadros, and the Ampere GeForces. We’ll of course chime in where it’s important to – so with that, let’s analyze:
Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks
Right off the bat, we’re seeing some interesting results thanks to both Linux and Windows performance being included. We can see that on NVIDIA, performance between the OSes is virtually identical, while AMD stands to see a notable performance boost in Linux.
Aside from that, SolidWorks is a bit more neutral to gaming GPUs than some high-end design suites, but it is worth noting that workstation GPUs are required for the software’…….
Source: https://techgage.com/article/specviewperf-2020-v3-linux-windows/