Workstation graphics cards? Will an entertainment card do the job?

I heard entertainment cards are the ones driving the industry (e.g. gaming computers) so it should suffice for a workstation ...or will it?





This is going to be a workstation for a CMM (coordinate measuring machine) which is for reverse engineering, just the opposite of CAD.





A cheaper route for a laptop selection is the HP computer with the entertainment graphics card: NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 7600





The CMM has used a Dell computer with the workstation graphics card of: NVIDIA Quadro FX 350M Turbocache OpenGL





What does a workstation graphics card have over a gaming card? (HP 17" entertainment/gaming laptop is about $1500 while a 17" Dell workstation laptop is almost twice the cost)

Workstation graphics cards? Will an entertainment card do the job?
You're better off selecting a machine that has more of a workstation card, like a Quadro FX. A workstation card is able to render and handle very complex frames very quickly; whereas a gaming card, like a 7600, is more capable of rendering lots of less complex frames quickly.





For a job that sounds graphically intense like CMM you'll need the extra power from a workstation card to better process your images. Workstation cards generally have many more readily accessable features for tweaking the performance for specific applications (3D Studio Max, CAD, etc.)





I was personaly using a bunch of Dell M90s the other week, each with a 512 mb Quadro FX 2500M. They killed Photoshop and Illustrator files, but stunk for gaming. (Hey, I got bored and fired up Oblivion.) But my Inspirion 9300 blows away Oblivion (with an aging 6800) and chunks along slowly in Photoshop.





Have you looked at the Dell M65? Or priced them on eBay? You can find decently priced M90 %26amp; M65 there.
Reply:Workstation class video cards basically accelerates OpenGL (which is why they often have GL in their names).





The "consumer" class video cards mainly accelerate transform and lighting, and shading. And they want to compete on numbers (numbers of polygons processed, amount of bandwidth, amount of pipelines, etc.) Those are relatively irrelevant in workstation class cards.





I know a lot of games say they run under OpenGL. The truth is they use VERY LITTLE OpenGL, maybe like 10% of the available stuff in OpenGL. The first Quake OpenGL drivers are known as "miniGL" for that reason.





So to answer your question: different video card accelerate different things.
Reply:Proffesional video cards are almost identical to consumer ones, but the huge difference is that they come with drivers that offer extra features like hardware overlay (meaning the gfx draws the GUI not the cpu for consumer ones), programmable Antiaialis lines, Virtual Frame Buffer...


If you do CAD, you'll definetly need these features...
Reply:A workstation graphics card is specialized in


- multiple windows (unlike games which run in fullscreen)


- fast geometry (unlike games where texture and pixel shaders are more important)


- better open gl support





But most important, the drivers are optimized and certified for certain applications, and more stable, which avoids losing time with crashes. And time is money...