Workstation video cards?

[EBOBO]

What's the purpose of them? What could possibly necessitate a video card ranging in the thousands? i.e. Quadro 6000

[Iceman0124]

Exact pinpoint renders for things such as vheicle/building/contraption etc design, think many moving parts working together such as an engine prototype....things where a millimeter or so off could mean hundreds of thoudands of dollars or much much more lost or even death.... They are tools for professionals, and if you really need one you'll know it.

Gaming cards and workstation cards are very similar, but the differences are major. Cosumer cards are built for speed at the cost of accuarcy, our renders need to be fast...not perfect. Workstation cards are the opposite, they need to be perfectly accuate at all times, speeds good but not priority, major differences in the cards are ECC ram (expensive, but a lost bit could be catastophic) and very robust and detailed driver support...the drivers are really where the bulk of the expense comes from and , they have to work and have to work well, we gripe and moan about bugs in our games...when the card is holding you back from your livliehood....

It cost money to make money and or move things forward to a large degree, great designs arent doodled out on a napkin in a country diner anymore.

[Sprint]

Workstation cards are built, as iceman said, for ultimate accuracy and also for extreme durability. The cores are usually underclocked quite a bit to achieve the stability. Im yet to see one Quadro come back for warranty at work.

Workstation card core chips are mostly identical to the consumer grade stuff (cept the memory controller), but everything around it is usually made of much higher quality components. The heatsinks and fans are made of better materials etc. etc.

The most expensive cards have nothing but the best chips and components and each individual component and the whole card go under some serious testing before being sold.

It all adds up to many work hours meaning very expensive kit.

[Iceman0124]

There are many products out that scale th same way, look at cameras, a $200 point and shoot for the trip to disney world or the $5000+++ used to shoot what we see in magazines and such, a nice solid sub $500 asian import guitar vs a $3K+ made in the USA model, the latter has better quality components and much more time and care in onstruction.

Back to the cards a lot of pro level apps will work to a degree on consumer cards (with some hacking and preening), but thats more like an artists sketch pad....good for practice and education, or proof of concept work but nothing mission critical...for most pro apps key features are disabled and their is no formal support unless a proper card is being used.

[EBOBO]

Wow. Alright then, thanks a lot to both of you. :]