Pro Graphics: Seven Cards Compared
Table of contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The Pro Market And Workstation Graphics Technology
- 3. Nvidia Quadro FX 5600
- 4. Nvidia Quadro FX 1700
- 5. Nvidia Quadro FX 570
- 6. Nvidia Quadro FX 370
- 7. AMD FireGL V7700 With DisplayPort
- 8. AMD FireGL V5600
- 9. ATI FireGL V3600
- 10. Test Configuration
- 11. 3D Studio Max 9: Test Results
- 12. Solidworks 2007: Test Results
- 13. Maya 6.5: Test Results
- 14. Viewperf 10.0 - CATIA, EnSight, Pro/Engineer: Test Results
- 15. Viewperf 10.0 - UGS Teamcenter Visualization Mockup & UGS NX: Test Results
- 16. Conclusion: AMD's FireGL V7700 Provides The Best Workstation Value
Anyone who wants a professional graphics card for their workstation can usually get by paying less than $1,500 for a solid product. This is because AMD is really putting the pressure on pricing, which makes life difficult for Nvidia, but is great for customers.
Especially designed for CAD, DTP, and visual simulations, workstation graphics cards include optimizations for professional applications such as AutoCAD, SolidWorks, ProEngineer and the like. Nvidia and AMD realize that this is less about the hardware and more about dedicated drivers—you can hardly tell the difference between the FireGLs and Quadro FX models and their gaming counterparts. The smaller number of cards manufactured and sold, plus the need for independent driver development, certification and extensive support, makes these products expensive, and this is then reflected in the form of significantly higher prices.
To make this business concept work, the manufacturers protect themselves fairly successfully so that nobody can take a cheap gaming card like the GeForce or Radeon and turn it into a Quadro FX or FireGL. Granted, hackers repeatedly try to destroy this distinction by employing soft-mods on drivers and in the graphics cards’ BIOS files—and this is sometimes possible because in the end, the products are 99% the same.
In terms of performance, the differences are clear: if you compare a gaming graphics card with its (almost) identical workstation brother, the drivers ensure that a workstation model runs the professional applications much faster. Naturally, the gaming card thus runs those high-end app significantly slower. On the other hand, you could compare these graphics cards in gaming, though that doesn’t make much sense since nobofy buys a pricey workstation card for entertainment.
Since our last test of the AMD FireGL V7600 and Nvidia Quadro FX 4600, we also put the FireGL V8650 through the benchmark course. In this comparison, we give special attention to Nvidia’s Quadro FX 5600 and AMD’s FireGL V7700, the latter featuring DisplayPort connectivity. The Quadro FX 170, 570 and 370 from Nvidia are also examined, as are the FireGL V5600 and V3600 from AMD. For a complete list of benchmark participants, see the Test Configuration page.
- FireGL ,
- Quadro ,
- Workstation
who cares if they are not gaming cards?!
This is a pretty inconclusive article. Workstations are not 100% about perf and framerates. It is Stability that is the most important did you bother to test long term for 6 months plus using the software tested with on a daily basis and tell us which is more stable. In my experience NVIDIA is more stable with my Maya work and FireGL crashes, instabilities all the time. Run that test and I will care about this article. Because speed doesn't do me any good when my computer crashes and I am running around dealing with tech support for 3 days end up behind schedule and losing money.
who cares if they are not gaming cards?!
Well this is "toms hardware" - not "toms gaming hardware"
Just out of interest, how would current gaming graphics cards perform in those tests?
You're damn right I'm going to softmod a gaming card into a FireGL. If they're the same damn card, why do they have to charge 1000% of what it's worth? They've been ripping us off for YEARS. They know it, and tom's hardware knows it. I'm not going to pay $1500 for a card when I can get a $100 HD 3870 and softmod it into the same exact stupid $1500 card. No one should.
You're damn right I'm going to softmod a gaming card into a FireGL. If they're the same damn card, why do they have to charge 1000% of what it's worth? They've been ripping us off for YEARS. They know it, and tom's hardware knows it. I'm not going to pay $1500 for a card when I can get a $100 HD 3870 and softmod it into the same exact stupid $1500 card. No one should.
This isn't new, I've been "softmodding" GeForces into Quadros since the Geforce 2 GTS.
What you are paying the difference for, is stability, drivers, and software compatibility. Personally, I don't think this justifies the price difference, but it does justify a small price hike (which is what they should be charging).
The price difference is in the amount of time and work put into guaranteeing that Quadro and FireGL are stable for the businesses using them. In essence the infrastructure behind these cards is what makes them more expensive not the hardware itself.
For example did you know Quadro cards go through extensive stress testing and certification such EMI certifications and so on before hitting market. And Quadro drivers are certified for the applications being used on them. This costs a lot more money than to simply produce a driver for gaming and basic use.
If your a hobbiest playing with professional apps you don't need an expensive card cause if your machine goes down for a day or 2 no worries to you. But, if your a business working on the latest commercial for a client and the job deadline is short and every day of work you loose based on an unstable PC costs you thousands of dollars. Buying a pro card makes perfect sense.
The extra is partly for the additional software to accelerate these workstation apps. More is a price premium because they don't sell as many of them and they are being sold to people who can pay several thousand each year to save 100's of hours. That aside, I think anything over 150% of original+$200 is extortion.
If small glitches and miscalculations occur in a game, it doesn't stop business. Miscalculate or crash in business app would seriously affect business users and thus GPU sales.
if he wants to pay $1500 for a card let em, there business users and they like to pay stupid amounts of money for stuff, ie $1000 for a office chair?
$5000 for an office desk?
jebus they even pay some tech dude $250 to re-plug a printer in, lmao
Paying $1500 for a card is nothing when you way the consequences. 1500 for a card that stable, with a guarantee of stability with support teams that have experience in the professionals industry keeping down time to a minimum vs. $200 for a card that doesn't have any of this and could potentially end up costing you days of down time where each day equals $10,000 a day due to a deadline fast approaching for the latest project. Id say small price to pay for a guarantee that these pro cards offer. Its like insurance for your car really. May suck to pay for it but, what happens if your $20,000 car gets totaled and you don't have insurance. One of those now what situations. Business who trip over dollars to pick up pennies and don't look at the long run cost of things including the cost of failed equipment well lets just say they don't stay in business all that long.
i'm guessing none of you have ever worked as an engineer then? sure it might not have the shiny bells and whistles of gaming but the pure bulk of data required to be manipulated in 3d requires bulk grunt.
who cares if they arent gaming cards? the people who will be designing your next gen of hardware care you mindless fool.
you think all offices pay stupid amounts for everything? the only businesses doing that are the ones who dont have high tech overheads ie businesses who dont buy this sort of hardware. when missing a deadline by minutes if not seconds can cost a company tens if not hundreds of millions in lost contracts good stable hardware is more than worth the cost for a little bit of security. you dont have the time to bugger around playing with modding crap or get modded crap to work.
Can someone enlighten me on the difference between the business and gaming counterparts of these cards? I have an opportunity to replace my Rage II with a Quadro NVS 280, and would like to know if it is worth it. I would also like to do the odd 3D game every now and then. Or am I better off with a Radeon 3870 or something? Thanks in advance . . .
Quadros and Fire GLs has many hardware features you won't need in games, such as 8 clipping regions and hardware accelated clip planes which are not available on th eGeforces nor the readons. Gaming cards has only 1 clip region and optimized for full screen performance. both are not cetified by Autodesk. For example, I used Geforce 280GTX with 3ds max and it really sucks without these clipping planes. with many viewports and dropdown GUIs elements no geforce will perform right.
Pricing wise, until midrange all are good ( below 600$ ) for the high end series, I think it's not priced for individuals.