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Hi!

I'm buying a new PC and I have doubts with the graphic card. I want something good for my workstation. I don't know if take a quadro (pricey) or a good gaming card.

What would you choose?

I see quadros have much less memory for the same price, but probably have great performance with less memory. Never tryed those; are they worth the price?
If you would follow the quadro path which one would you choose.
I think I can go up to 500€ with the graphic card.

Thanks!

A gamingcard is as good as any other card now, and you don't have to ruin your economy on some special fancy highend 3d card.

I bought a XFX GeForce 8800GTS, it's nicely priced and really fast both for gaming and for 3D.

/ Max

Thanks Max. That card has a good price for the performance.

I'd personally recommend that one as well.

Thanks Adrian,

That one will be my first choice then if I don't find something else.

Anybody has any experience with quadros? I'm curious about how they perform.

You can also check ebay for prices if you're not scared of that kinda stuff. I purchased my then new quadro fx 3450 a year ago for 600 dollars, when it was retailing for 1400 and I've never had a problem with it. I've messed with gaming cards and softquadro hacks, but a workstation card is less pain in the long run if you run apps like aliasstudio or maya.

Quadro Fx haven't been anything special for me. It runs ok and stable
in all situations, but it isn't performing much better than new gaming gards.
So, if you really don't need hi-end ultimum gard for 100 million poly scenes,
you are fine with 8800 series.


-LarsSon

Thanks for all your comments.

Cheers.

So, if you really don't need hi-end ultimum gard for 100 million poly scenes

why is that ?? if 8800 have more memory than quadros ... is there something special about the card or the software that makes quadros better for huge scenes ??

If i need huge scenes i cant go on a 8800 ?? and strictly have to use a quadro ??

i have a quadro, and sometimes nvidia special drivers for autocad and max are not certified by discreet and i dont see any diference between being cetified or not. Nvidia special drivers even make autocad and Max crash very often and i dont know why.

Here is a technical pdf about the differences between quadro and GeForce GPUs from nvidia site:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/pg_20020219537537.html

The difference is mainly hardware acceleration of wireframes and overlay planes. But in some softwares like aliasstudio and maya, the overlay planes features aren't even visible under a gaming card unless you apply a hack, which only sometimes works and in those cases it's not always stable. Overlay planes does things that I would say are similar to tooltips in their behavior, but its graphics are specific to each tool, so they might have measurements and helper lines, brush sizes and what not, and they don't cause your screen to redraw the overlaid 3d view panel, hence the name.