Which Quadro to buy

[Mike N]

Hello,

I don't quite understand what are the advantages that Quadro has over the "normal" gaming graphics cards. Looking at the specs some of the newer gaming cards one can clearly see that they overwhelm the quadros in terms of pure processing power...

So what's the catch. Should I go with the newest baddest gaming card or an older Quadro ? And does Quadro help you right out of the box in all kinds of graphic and editing applications or should there be some support from the software itself like the new CS5 which uses the CUDA thingy
I can't afford the 5800 flagship right now I was thinking maybe something in the likes of 3800 or 4600. Some of these cards also offer an SDI output. I think that would be pretty useful in connecting it to professional monitors and such ?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[David Rasberry]

The biggest advantage to Quadro cards is when used with specific applications like CS5 that take advantage of CUDA processing technology. CUDA programs offload repetitive number crunching tasks to the GPU effectively increasing the speed and processing power of your computer.
With Quadro you get Tesla support too. Tesla is a GPU card without video outputs. Multiple Tesla cards can be added to a Quadro equipped computer effectively turning it into a desktop super computer for a very modest price. This all presumes that you have a motherboard with support for multiple PCI 2 slots and application software that can take advantage of it.
If you are using only one graphics card in a more modest workstation, you can get the benefits of CUDA technology with the GTX series cards too. The GTX285 is a good moderately priced high power GPU for Adobe CS5 apps.

 

[Mohammed El Sharqawy]

for CS5 GTX 470 and 480 should perform similar to Quadro 5800.. SDI is not real justified investment..

if you are more into officially compatible cards.. use GTX 285 and Quadro 3800, 4800, CX and 5800..

official compatibility for 470 and 480 will come soon.. well, if you got it now you can make it work anyway with a small modification to a txt file..

Quadros are more usefull if you do heavy CGI work using Maya or 3DS Max form autodesk..

 

[Subhadip Sen]

All three Geforce, Quadro and Tesla are based on the very same GPUs. Geforce and Quadro are the most similar to each other – they are basically the same card with different software optimizations. Quadro cards are optimized for CAD-related applications. It also significantly accelerates CGI applications. However, Geforce cards are typically faster in DirectX applications (like games). Another major plus point for Quadro is the superior support and longer warranties compared to Geforce.

Tesla are distributed computing cards without outputs, like David mentioned. Basically, you can put in a bunch of Tesla cards in a super computer to accelerate GPU compute CUDA processes (like video encoding). Starting with the 2010 series, Tesla is differentiated from Geforce by additional cache. Otherwise, the chips are identical. Previously, we had several users soft-modding Geforce cards to Quadro. You can also put multiple Geforce cards in SLI.

ATI has a similar line – Radeon for Geforce, FirePro for Quadro and Firestream for Tesla.
The best solution, by far, is to get a Geforce GTX 460 1GB. It will far outperform the previous-gen Quadro FX 5800 for CS5 acceleration and is only $230! You could even consider putting two of them in SLI for under $500 - but SLI scaling in CUDA processes is hit or miss. Be wary of the nomenclature, it is very confusing. The FX 3800 is a 192 shader product, while the FX 5600 is 128. Don't buy a 4600 - its a 112 shader product from a chip from 2006! GTX 460, in comparison, is a 336 core product, with greater clock speeds and a superior architecture too. If you are just buying for CUDA – the clear choice is Geforce. If you are also likely to use one of the supported CGI software (like Maya), go for the Quadro. Do note that GTX 460 is not "officially" supported yet, but you can get it running with a mod.

The other option is to wait till Adobe supports more open compute standards (ATI cards) as ATI have a clear technology advantage apart from the proprietary CUDA.