Why does this cost so much?

[nickv360]

http://www.newegg.com/app/view...=14-124-114&DEPA=1

 

[amol]

512MB GDDR3

2x DVI

3840x2400 MAX RESOLUTION

 

[bjc112]

The 512 definitely drives that price up.

 

[nickv360]

Well, I know that it is a beast, but why isn't it even considering in gaming benchmarks and what not. Is it too good to game with/unrealistic for the consumer or something?

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: nickv360
Well, I know that it is a beast, but why isn't it even considering in gaming benchmarks and what not. Is it too good to game with/unrealistic for the consumer or something?

Because it's not a gaming GPU... it's a workstation GPU.

 

[nickv360]

What doesn
t i t have that a Gaming Card does?

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: nickv360
What doesn
t i t have that a Gaming Card does?

It is designed to be a polygon crunching beast with very nice OpenGL support. It can even antialias wirefames in hardware, which is a hard trick to pull since you have to make the lines smooth while retaining accuracy (which is paramount in CAD apps), so you can't simply use full scene AA. Games are primarily about rendering textures and special effects quickly. The geometry of the models on even the newest game is pretty simple compared to what you find in a Solidworks or ProEngineer model (which is used to build an actual physical object like a jet engine), so the Wildcat is desgined to allow you to easily move around incredibly detailed 3D models with a huge polygon count, and even use the system memory for additional storage space if it runs out of space in its own onboard memory. In gaming, it won't do as well as a 6800 Ultra, mainly becuase the card and drivers haven't been tweaked to quickly texture and apply shaders to models like gaming cards do, since you don't have to achieve an illusion of realism in a modeling apps.

Also, the drivers are tested thoroughly to be as perfect as they can be for people who would lose a lot of money in lost productivity if their rig crashed due to a driver error. They just can't relesase a new driver and let the end users find the bugs for them, like is done in consumer lever graphics cards. This in-depth testing takes considerable time and money, which is then passed on to the purchaser.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: nickv360
Well, I know that it is a beast, but why isn't it even considering in gaming benchmarks and what not. Is it too good to game with/unrealistic for the consumer or something?

It's a workstation card. It would probably rock for OpenGL games, but is made for real work.

A 3D Labs card is what little Quadros want to be when they grow up.

 

[DusterAZ]

It's good for rendering ... that is all. It will get stomped in games.

http://www.anandtech.com/video...c.aspx?i=2307&p=12

Gotta love that 5.4 FPS in Doom 3 @ 1600x1200. This is NOT a gaming card ... this is for doing actual work

 

[Cerb]

Holy crap...I hope it looks good at 5 FPS, at least

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Cerb

Originally posted by: nickv360
Well, I know that it is a beast, but why isn't it even considering in gaming benchmarks and what not. Is it too good to game with/unrealistic for the consumer or something?

It's a workstation card. It would probably rock for OpenGL games, but is made for real work.

A 3D Labs card is what little Quadros want to be when they grow up.

Well, the other way around most of the time.
Take some of these for example.
http://www.anandtech.com/video...c.aspx?i=2307&p=10

This card is simply unusable for games but the Quadro can be soft-modded back to a GeForce (can't it?) and be used for games. Sometimes it can even be playable without softmodding, totally unlike the Realizm card. http://www.anandtech.com/video...c.aspx?i=2307&p=13
Ouch. However, the Realizm card is cheaper than most of the Quadro solutions, and is good for strictly CAD.