I have a related question.
Lets say I have too much money in my pocket. Would it benefit my games if I purchased a workstation graphics card?
Thanks.
Anthony
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"Gaming" vs "workstation class" video (google sketchup)
Im needing a bump in performance when rending in google sketchup. Looking at the system and the program reccomendations the issue is mainly in the video card. Everything I see tells me, for this application, a "workstation class" video card is whats needed.
Personally I am having an issue getting past specs and costs between "gaming" and "workstation" cards. I know they are optimized differently and openGL is also a difference. Are the quadro cards really worth the price difference when rendering? Here is what I am seeing.
9800 GTX+
1GB Memory
Memory Clock: 1100 MHz (2200 DDR)
Memory Bandwidth: 70.4 GB/sec
FLOPS: 470.016 GFLOPS
Pixel Fill Rate: 11808 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate: 47232 MTexels/sec
Quadro 3700
512MB memory
Memory Clock: 800 MHz (1600 DDR)
Memory Bandwidth: 51.2 GB/sec
FLOPS: 280 GFLOPS
Pixel Fill Rate: 8000 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate: 28000 MTexels/sec
As far as numbers goes, the 9800 is the clear winner, has an additional 512MB of memory, and is 1/5 the price of the quadro. Is the quadro really that much better or will the geforce work just fine. The system is a precision 380 3GB ram and a quadro FX540 (128MB)
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Answers
anthony
That one I do know. and no you would not, thus why I am having a hard time justifying paying 5x for a quadro card when a geforce card is technically "faster". Geforce cards are tweaked more for gaming.
Callandor
I understand the why, even though I am skeptical as to the justification for the price difference and think its a means to tap buisnesses for a larger profit. Lets face it the latest quadro cards are older geforce cards with some tweaks and openGL drivers. Is there not a point where the power of the card will trump the openGL drivers that are better for rendering? Or am I not going to notice much bump in speed by going with the geforce.
That's a slippery slope sort of requirement, for certain.
Things that were considered workstation class graphics two years ago aren't nearly as good as my newest gaming video card.
The "important" distinctions in the difference between workstation and gaming video cards are mainly in
1) the version of the 3D API supported (usually a professional workstation card will have very well tested drivers for OpenGL. The application used will generally require a certain level of the driver. A gaming card may or may not fully support the OpenGL specifications).
2) Resolution of the output raster. Some very high end workstations have 2K by 2K displays; Most consumer cards won't support those sorts of resolutions. Again, the application you use will tell you the resolution output you need to support. If it's a windows application, then you can assume normal windows graphic resolutions
3) Z Buffer depth and accuracy. This is the biggie. Essentially, you can think of a Z Buffer as being an address in memory, which has a "depth". For instance, an 8bit Zbuffer will be able to handle 256 discrete values or "depths" in the buffer. A 32Bit ZBuffer would handle 4Gig of values. The real issue, though, is that the depth is most useful if it contains fractional values... ie, floating point sorts of things. For instance, the 9800 GTX+ you listed above has a 24bit ZBuffer. The Quadro 3700 on the other hand, offers a "lossless Z Buffer".
I'm not exactly certain what that means, per se, but ZBuffer resolution is the holy grail in a workstation/professional CAD environment.
You can see the product literature here:
http://www.nvidia.com/docs
Hope this helps. There really are differences.
-john
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by: CallandorPosted on 2009-08-07 at 11:12:04ID: 25045461
The difference is the OpenGL drivers and support that you will get. Technically, a gaming card can be made into a workstation-class card with a firmware update that will let it run OpenGL drivers. The driver development is what is so expensive, since they require a lot of effort, along with the dedicated support that you get for those cards.
Google Sketchup seems to require OpenGL support, so you have to get a workstation class video card.