Requesting a comparison of Pro vs. Gaming graphics cards

[edwaugh2]

Hi all,

I was wondering if it is possible to request a comparison of Professional graphics cards compared to the regular gaming ones?

I work for a small engineering company with a limited budget to spend on computer hardware and whenever we attend a seminar on Autodesk Inventor they try and sell us the Pro versions because they are "higher performance". Is this really the case for the same hardware but just different drivers? Could Anand do a comparison? I'm sure lots of people would be interested. The only previous comparisons I've seen are for OpenGL and Inventor is Direct X.

Cheers

Ed

 

[wwswimming]

Hi all,

I was wondering if it is possible to request a comparison of Professional graphics cards compared to the regular gaming ones?

I work for a small engineering company with a limited budget to spend on computer hardware and whenever we attend a seminar on Autodesk Inventor they try and sell us the Pro versions because they are "higher performance". Is this really the case for the same hardware but just different drivers? Could Anand do a comparison? I'm sure lots of people would be interested. The only previous comparisons I've seen are for OpenGL and Inventor is Direct X.

Cheers

Ed

the CAD industry has been pushing expensive workstation cards for a while.

in the beginning you needed them because there were no other options (besides using a drafting board.)

recently i've used FireGL (expensive "pro" card) & regular gaming video cards.

the gaming video cards are just as good as the FireGL (and nVidia Quadro). cost-wise, the gaming video cards are much cheaper.

i'm not saying that you can just pick any gaming video card. when spending my own money, i have always leaned towards cards that have been out for a year (so that driver bugs are fixed), cards that are "classics" (very popular because they work well).

right now i have a Sapphire 4850 with 1 GB of RAM. there are some things i can do that will slow it down (particle effects) - but that's part of CAD, knowing where the limits of your hardware are.

admittedly, some of the more expensive workstation video cards are works of art - fast processors, even more video RAM, $4K price tags (which is about what my first video card cost).

CAD vendors often make money selling video cards, so they will try & sell the cards they make a profit on (ATI FireGL & nVidia Quadro). as soon as you say, "i think i'll use a gaming card", WHOOSH, part of their profit evaporates.

 

[Sylvanas]

I have no experience with workstation cards but I do know that Nvidia have made it mandatory to buy their high end workstation cards instead of an ordinary desktop card. Fermi's Double Precision performance is limited on consumer dekstop parts (1/5?) whereas it runs at full 1/2 Single Precision on workstation cards. Also EEC is enabled and Quadros come with massive amounts of memory. All big deals when you are talking compute performance.

 

[edwaugh2]

Hi,

Thanks for the responses. I had noticed the difference in the Fermi setup but I think this is mostly for GPU type applications. As far as I know Inventor is just another Direct X 11 application so as long as all DX11 features are accelerated I don't think there should be any difference.

I think the use of ECC memory is probably important where you want every frame to have perfect image quality, minor artifacts in games are probably unnoticed and I would say the same is true for general purpose CAD where a wrongly coloured pixel is not really a big deal.

Both card suppliers do offer much better support with the Pro cards, which is great if you can afford it, but a 3 year no questions replacement is not something I think we are keen to pay for.

Ed

 

[Lonbjerg]

You are forgetting one key aspect:
The drivers.
In gaming they are made performance > accuracy
For CAD ect. its the other way around...support is different too.

Going cheap on work-cards is always a bad idea.

 

[edwaugh2]

I think you're correct about the drivers being tuned for accuracy but what does that mean in this context? Obviously I want an image I can use to visualise my design but the GPU has no effect on the actual dimensions/shape I am designing. Perhaps you could show an example of where the accuracy affects CAD? Perhaps there is some geometric distortion when looking at an object of a certain shape in an isometric view? This would be another great article for the anandtech guys...

 

[T2k]

I played MW2 on a 4GB Quadro 5800 w/ i7 8GB and it was uglier and less smooth than on my 5870.

EDIT: it seems I accidentally deleted this part prior posting...
Besides Quadros we also use a lot of consumer Nvidia and ATi cards, mostly for 3dsmax and Fusion, there's no difference in features except you get specialized drivers with better performance for professional cards and they come with more memory onboard - the latter can be important if you use GPU-based, memory-intensive renderers (eg we have developed our own using CUDA.)

 

[Genx87]

I think you're correct about the drivers being tuned for accuracy but what does that mean in this context? Obviously I want an image I can use to visualise my design but the GPU has no effect on the actual dimensions/shape I am designing. Perhaps you could show an example of where the accuracy affects CAD? Perhaps there is some geometric distortion when looking at an object of a certain shape in an isometric view? This would be another great article for the anandtech guys...

I think what he meant was driver stability is much better on the professional cards but slower vs gaming cards where stability is less but faster. Plus I believe the gaming drivers dont open up features that are present in the professional cards. Features that are beneficial to professional level applications.

I suggest getting the professional level card. You will get better support and have access to features that are beneficial to you. And in the grand scheme of things the cost difference between the cards is very little when compared to the cost of the software + salary\benefits of the person doing the work.

 

[gorobei]

the current amd/ati firepro series v5700, v7800, and v8800 are the 5770/5850/5870 respectively. they sell for 2x or 3x the price of the gaming versions, though with double the memory usually.

according to some forums you can still soft mod the consumer versions and use the professional drivers with that last few generations of gpu(g80 and the older 3xxx radeons) but the performance wont fully match the professional versions.

for the type of work you seem to be doing, the consumer versions should be fine. The artifacts mentioned are openGL rendering errors(the odd miscolored pixel, wireframe aliasing, solid shade surface shimmer, funky texture mapping. generally rare) since you aren't doing final renders for print or animation it wont affect your workflow.