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Workstation vs Mainstream

peetee

peetee

peetee

Soldato
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18 Aug 2004
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Just wondering why exactly are workstation graphics card that much more expensive than the mainstream card? even the 8800GTX is cheap compared to a lot of workstation cards.

Its just my uni recently got new PCs and we'v got £600-£700 cards in them, but I would have thought the money better spent on Quads, not Duals, or getting more than 1.5gb of ram?
All we do is a bit of photoshop, a bit of after effects, neither very demanding really.
Then we use lightwave too, obviously this is where it matters, but im sure to the point we are using it that a cheaper card would be fine, I know I would definately prefer having the lower card and a Quad because it will make a HUGE difference to rendering times...

Anyone care to have some input, what is the advantage of a workstation, and is it noticable for average user, or us lot using After effects & Lightwave etc(although fairly amateurly?)
 
I always thought the workstation gfx cards are good for stuff like autocad, video edit and 3d apps?
But 1.5 GB :eek:, thats really way to little for pc's mainly used for ps.
No idea about the advantages of workstations, except that some of them come with dual cpu boards ( dual quad core xeons, yummy :)).
 
i think they are just bog standard mobos etc, i just meant workstation graphics.

Well we dont really use massive high res pictures etc, and have loads of layers or things open..
Im sure a 8800 or whatever would be adequate for everything except maybes lightwave which is what I was wondering about, hell the quadros that were in them last year couldnt texture the preview window, we had to run wireframe or it would crash, though my x800xtpe was fine, as was my 8800GTS..
 
Bear in mind that there are a few desktop cards knocking about that can magically become workstation cards with a BIOS flash.
 
hmm i googled for the card and it came up £600 before =/ drivers cost money ontop of that? wierd!
 
No the drivers are included in the price. But them and the BIOS are the reason why the cards are so expensive.

They aren't the same as the desktop versions. They're written for workstation purposes and nVidia and ATi charge a fortune for the privilege.
 
Unless you're working with high-poly models/scenes or intend to in the future it does indeed seem like they just wasted a load of money getting workstation cards.

At work on the PCs using Maya/zBrush on high-poly models (~8,000,000+) we just switched from using 8800GTXs to Quadro FX 4500s and the difference is amazing. Practically no viewport slowdowns no matter what you throw at them. The 8800 GTX would slow down a little usually when you hit about 1mil poly models.
 
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