Workstation cards are for creating. Desktop cards are for playing.

[xMax]

Objective: I want to get a video card for media playback.

Problem: I dont know which card to get.

Theory: Both cards can do all functions, but workstation cards, like a quadro or a firegl, are specialized for creating media and games, while desktop cards, like a geforce or a radeon, are specialized for playing media and games.

Solution: Without going into depth and throwing all sorts of ifs and buts, and in the advent that the theory is correct, then i should definitely get a desktop card.



Question: Am i making sense?

 

[Soccerman06]

Workstation cards are for CAD and Engineering, high-end video graphics creation.

Are you trying to watch movies? Because if you are, get a X1x000 series card because of avivo (more future use than current).

 

[xMax]

No movie watching here, simply viewing AVI animations. Both types of cards would deliver the required performance, but desktop cards would still be my preffered choice.

No to ATI. My Eizo CG210 monitor has a compatibility with DVI connected ATI cards. I had purchased an ATI X1800XT before realizing this incompatibility as i am now forced to exchange the card for an Nvidia Geforce.

My concern now with the Nvidia cards is not so much to do with performance but DVI signal quality. Having experienced the noise artifacts with the X1800 card, i am now all paranoid about getting the wrong Nvidia card.

In theory, DVI should have equal image quality all around. That is, there is no such thing as image quality in DVI. Its simply 100% or 0%. The only issue is compatibitliy. But if thats so, then any Nvidia card should produce the right signal. As long as there is no incompatibility issue, which is what Eizo states about the Nvidia cards. Hmm...I think i just figured it out.

 

[Peter]

There is no image quality loss on the cable, however, there is the issue of digital signal integrity. NVidia isn't quite up to the job, at least everything up to the 6xxx series wasn't.

 

[xMax]

That sounds logical. But the reason they werent up to the job when it comes to digital signal integrity is because DVI is still not more than 5 years old on the mainstream market and for this reason older cards like the 6xxx series had problems with signal integrity. The problem was due to a few reasons, one of which was that the actual DVI signal was emulated and not native.

Im certain things have changed nowadays.

The thing is that there really arent any options that i have. I cant go with ATI. I can try Matrox, but they only have one PCI-e x16 video card that would work on my motherboard, and thats not very enviting when compared to Nvidia and their massive range of PCI-e cards. So Nvidia is the only way to go.

Now if quadros had better signal integrity, then i wouldn't hesitate. But i dont know if that is so. So i have to assume that the gefore and quadro models for their most recent cards will have the same DVI signal quality, and for this reason i have no choice but to go with a Geforce. The only question now is which company would have the best quality, if there is such a thing. Im guessing they should all be the same. But thats just a guess.

 

[Steve]

What was the problem with ATI?

 

[xMax]

It was producing noise artifacts in DVI connection mode.

This was confirmed by Eizo.

I should have went with Nvidia to begin with. I mean, Nvidia, the actual company, has bought over 1000 Eizo monitors that are certain to be driven by Nvidia based cards. So the two companies have relations and work well together.