[jrharvey]

I always laugh about these threads becaues 95% of the people have no clue what a workstation card does and/or why they would need one it the proffesional world. Here is my honest opinion on the whole subject. These cards are meant for high intensity/ high polygon modeling in design or engineering. Most of these cards are used for creation of rapid prototypingwith things such as cars, buildings, bridges, cell phones and whatever you can think of. Architects, engineers, annimators (like Pixar) all buy these 1,000$-4,000$ cards because they time is money and the faster you can turnover projects, the faster you can make the dough. NOW, this doesnt mean that quadro cards are any better than the Geforce cards because it is actually quite the opposite. Nvidia's Geforce cards are usually cutting edge tech with the latest and most experimental drivers that perform much better where as the quadros are time proven hardware with drivers that have been tweaked for maximum stability even at the cost of lower performance. ATI cards are actually the opposite in that the gaming cards are purposely gimped to not perform well in workstation apps (I guess to sell more workstation cards). Stupid move IMO. All in all you aren't paying for a higher performing card, your paying for the so called "support" and the proven stability that these cards provide. I have used many quadro cards and NEVER had a driver crash EVER!!!. I would take my GTX 260 over all of them but I will say its not quite as stable but it sure does blow the socks off any other Workstation card IMO.

EDIT: Its true that some applications like Pro Engineer and Solidworks will perform better with quadro drivers BUT most other apps perform just as good if not better than their Geforce counterpart including Maya, 3dsMax, Rhino 3d, Autocad, Catia and whatever else you can think of.

Hey even this bench proves it

 

[jrharvey]

Quote:

Originally Posted by justarealguy You can't be bothered? That's cute. That's a horrible analogy. These are physically identical cards, unless they are actually modified (rare) with more shaders / memory. The only way your analogy would work is if you state that the Walmart drill was exactly the same as the one from the trade suppliers - except a different brand (but physically the same). If that were the case I'd buy Walmart - I can save money, and as a consumer that's my goal. The price hike is because of the development of the drivers - Which is a lot of work.

Your analogy may be true but that is assuming you know alot about power drills. Your average walmart employee is going to know didly squat about drills and your up the creek if you cannot figure out how to change the settings or bits or if it just plain breaks. Sure you can get a new one but they wont be able to help you figure it out. Now, you go to a drill specialist and they can teach you everything you want to know about drills and what settings do what and not only supply full time tech support for all your drilling needs but you pay a premium for this service and it aint cheap. Come to find out that you are using a wood bit to drill holes into steel. Sure, you can do it but its not the "Preffered Way". That is basically the difference here. Big name production companies do not support Geforce cards because Nvidia will not let them. Its not that the geforce is in any way worse than the quadro, its just that the company has chosen to refuse support on that line of cards when concerning professional apps (trust me I have been there and tried). Its the easy mans graphics card mainly because you can focus on what you need to do and not tech troubleshooting. I personally like the Geforce cards mainly because I am not made of money and I also know a good enough amount about what I am buying to fix any problems I may have myself.

Example.... The geforce drivers have a thing called "Threaded Optimization" that wreaked havoc in one of my most used apps called Rhino 3d. It was crashing the program all the time and I couldnt figure it out at all. Nvidia knew this but refused to help because it was not a "Certified" GPU. The guys at Rhino however go against the man and mostly use Geforce cards becauese they like to tweak and overclock like the rest of us and it was soon discovered what was causing the crashes and knew to dissable this feature for best performance. If this was any other company I would have been up the creek.

AS FOR THE HARDWARE... sometimes they add alot more memory and thats about it. The GPU doesnt really live any longer or perform any better than its Geforce counterpart. If it does perform better its because of driver support. Anyone that says that these cards where designed to do this or that or live longer or even perform better is just misinformed. I dont blame them, Nvidia and ATI has done a good job of making their quadros and FireGL's look like the best thing since sliced bread. Its all about the software and support, that is all.