Affordable Workstation Graphics Card Shoot-Out

MojoKid writes "While workstation graphics cards are generally much more expensive than their gaming-class brethren, it's absolutely possible to build a budget-minded system with a workstation-class graphics card to match. Both NVIDIA and ATI have workstation-class cards that scale down below $500, a fraction of the price of most high-end workstation cards. This round-up looks at three affordable workstation cards, two new FireGL cards from AMD/ATI and a QuadroFX card from NVIDIA, and offers an evaluation of their relative performance in applications like Cinema 4D, 3D StudioMax, and SpecViewperf, as well as their respective price points."

Comments

Re:Difference?

[kcbanner]

The workstation cards tend to have very low error tolerance, while the real time graphics cards allow for quite a bit of error in the name of speed. This is fine unless your rendering something.

Make your own Quadro at a fraction of the price

[nano2nd]

Have a look at this site - it is possible to flash an 8800 GTX to Quadro FX 5600:

http://aquamac.proboards106.com/index.cgi?board=hack2&action=display&thread=1178562617