Newtek's Lightwave 3D is a 3D rendering program that supports both Macs
and PCs. It was used to create the special effects for classic shows
like Star Trek and Babylon 5, and films like the upcoming Iron Sky and
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.
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Lightwave 3D 9.6:
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3D Rendering and Animation
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SPEC describes its benchmark as follows: "The
benchmark... contains 11 datasets -- ranging from 64,000 to 1.75
million polygons -- and representing such applications as 3D character
animation, architectural review, and industrial design. Scores for
individual workloads are composited under three categories: interactive,
render and multitask."
Performance is normalized against a stock configuration; a score of 3.0
means that the testbed completed a task 3x faster than the original
system.
We were surprised at how little difference we saw in Lightwave 9.6;
especially since the Lightwave benchmark in SpecViewPerf showed a 13%
performance improvement for the FirePro V3900 over its older cousin. This
is evidence of how workload choice can impact whether the CPU or GPU is
a limiting factor, even within the same program. The 6870 wins the
Interactive test by a hair, the other two tests are essentially a tie.
