SYS Technologies Cold Fusion 1000 - Athlon 1GHz

SYS offers only three basic video card options on their web site for use with the Cold Fusion 1000: the Guillemot 3D Prophet DDR (based on the GeForce 256 using DDR SDRAM), the Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator (GeForce 256 with SDR SDRAM) and the Matrox Millennium G400MAX.  The 3D Prophet DDR is the base video card, but SYS equipped our system with a reference board featuring NVIDIA’s Quadro chipset and 64MB of DDR SDRAM.

The Quadro is the professional level version of NVIDIA’s GeForce 256 chipset.  The Quadro itself is not very different from the regular GeForce; according to NVIDIA it simply has some “features” left “enabled” that are purposefully disabled on the GeForce in order to better separate the two products. 

The Quadro itself also boasts a higher clock speed of 135MHz - the default clock speed of the GeForce is 120 MHz.  This higher clock speed helps to increase the fill rate of the GeForce from 480Mpixel/s to 540Mpixel/s.  While this doesn’t help all that much in CAD applications that don’t take much advantage of higher fill rates, it does help give the Quadro the additional edge in 3D imaging applications. 

In spite of this, the Quadro itself performs virtually identically to the GeForce under most professional level applications with the major exception being its performance in anti-aliased wireframe performance.  If this isn’t an area where you’re concerned about performance, then you’re better off saving a few hundred bucks and going with the GeForce instead.

The Quadro card we received featured a full 64MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) SDRAM on-board and thus performed amazingly well in situations with high memory bandwidth requirements.  Outside of its improved wireframe AA performance, the Quadro performed identically to an overclocked GeForce with DDR SDRAM.

Getting SYS to outfit a Cold Fusion 1000 with any card available on the market shouldn’t be a problem as long as they can gain access to it.  We’ve talked to individuals that have had their Cold Fusion 1000 systems custom configured from SYS with a Diamond FireGL1 among other professional level 3D cards. 

However, for most users, we would recommend going with a GeForce as the video option, simply because it does offer some very strong professional level performance while doubling quite nicely as a powerful gaming card.  If you are turned off by the GeForce’s weaknesses then the Quadro is just as good of a solution, although it carries a significantly increased price tag. 

SYS offers a number of options for a monitor with the Cold Fusion 1000.  While they provided us with the very nice Viewsonic PT795 19” monitor, their default configuration uses the MAG InnoVision 800V, a decent but not perfect solution.  Your best bet would be to save the $350 and go searching for a monitor on your own.  From our experience, the supplied reference Quadro board had no problem driving the 1600 x 1200 x 32-bit color resolution without any blurred lines/text. 

If you do decide to get a Quadro with the Cold Fusion, you will most likely get ELSA’s Gloria-II, which is the only Quadro board in production.  We are currently working on a review of the Gloria-II, so stay tuned for that if you’re truly interested in the Quadro.