Firegl Vs. Quatro

T

The_Engineer

Gawd
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Mar 20, 2005
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I'm doing a project for my computer class. I need to price out a high end engineering workstation that is buildable in parts. (no SGI or prebuilts).

I need some help deciding on a video card.

Right now I found the Nvidia Quadro 4500 and 4400, which seem to be about $2,500 and $1,300 respectivley.

The highest end FireGL I could find being the 7100 Was about $800.

1. Why the HUGE price differences?
2. I need the best performing card. there are no budget restraints as I am not actually buying it. I just need to be able to justify the higher priced card, if that is definatley the best performer.

Your thoughts ?

Thanks.
 
The Quadro is the best workstation cards hands down. Ask anyone who knows about this and they will tell you there is no comparison. By the way the 4500 is the best and fastest workstation card of all. *** I almost forgot. Dell & some companies sell OEM cards, Stay away from them. Buy an official PNY card as they actually have a 3 year warranty and they actually have Tech support. No other card has tech support and more than a 30 day warranty. (in the nvidia quadro lineup that is)
 
The_Engineer said:
Right now I found the Nvidia Quadro 4500 and 4400, which seem to be about $2,500 and $1,300 respectivley.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

All i kno is that the nVidia Quadro 4500 is based on the 7800 GTX. Two Quadro is SLI is gonna rock.
 
ReDgUaRd008 said:
All i kno is that the nVidia Quadro 4500 is based on the 7800 GTX. Two Quadro is SLI is gonna rock.
Click to expand...

Actually that mofo is based off a special GPU Called G70GL instead of just a G70. It's clocked at 470Mhz, it also has 512MB Gddr 3 which is much faster and has a lower latency than the 7800GTX ram.
 
The 4500 is the best on the market right now. If budget is not an issue you could run 2.

The FireGL 7100 is an older card, not based off of ATI's newer cards.

Older Quadro's start at $48 and go up from there.
 
Okay, So the 4500 it is.

I was planning on Using SLI. Figured ATI's would dual up on crossfire. but sounds like I'm decided on the Quadro 4500 x2 (SLI)

I would like to have 2x 30" apple cinema displays for optimum workstation productivity. I assume with 4 Dual Link DVI ports in This setting I ought to theoretically be able to run 4 of these cinema displays, is this correct?

Also, any parrticular SLI motherboard recomendations? (was thinking dual XEON's or Dual FX's) (i know, this is the vid card forum... but if you happen to know, thanks for the info.)
Thanks all for your help.
 
Thanks for the linkage. That is a good site for some of the high-end info I needed. I apreciate it.

Any word on the Multiple Cinema Displays (2x 30")?

I'm really not familiar with how much graphics power it takes to drive that 30" display and if i'd be better off with something like the smaller ones for everyday graphics performance in applications like ProEngineer and other high end apps.
 
furocious said:
i was under the impression that Sli's can't run multiple monitors.
Click to expand...

haha...you're in luck, Kyle just today published an article on the subject...check the front page...
 
I believe with sli enabled you can only use 1 monitor for now. The good thing is with the latest quadro drivers you can enable/disable SLi on the fly and run the 2 monitors to multitask on the desktop environment. You can run 4 apple cinema displays with sli disabled, enable sli for those massive rendering jobs and You'll be down to 1. To go multi monitor again just disable sli hit apply and your back in business.
 
THE BEST performing card by a very long way is the fx4500, if you really want to push the envelope then go sli 4500. the price difference is because the 4500 is so much better.
check out www.3dprofessor.com for benchmarks.
it is also due to the big cooler and big fan a very very quiet card.
f
 
also, for the procs, you can't do dual fx, you would have to go dual opteron.
if price is again no object, I would reccomend the tyan board, two opteron dual core 280 (the ones beginning with higher numbers are for 4 or 8 way systems), and as much ram as you can afford.

if you can afford two 30" apple monitors, then I would say 16gb ram, and some 500gb hard drives, and for booting a 146gb 15k rpm scsi drive for booting...

what is the project?

also, can you please give us a work log.

ONE PROBLEM, SLI cannot run dual monitors, so for the sli stuff you would have to have one monitor on, and then for dual monitor sli off.

however sli on/off is only 2 clicks and no reboot.

f
 
one more thing, operating system should either be linux or windows small buisness edition 64 bit or 32 bit
good luck
f
 
Tyan S2895
2x Opteron 280
2x Quadro 4500 SLI
PCP&C 850 SSI
2x (possibly 3 or 4) Fujitsu MAU3___NP depending on your storage requirements.
2x WD4000KD/YR for large storage.

About as good as it gets in the workstation world.
 
PCP&C 850 SSI?

PCP&C 1KW SSI

I figure during the time it takes to save up for those dual 4500s, the 1KW will be out (any day now...)
 
16gb ram, huge case.

or, you could wait and get the 4 sli gigabyte royal card which will support 4 cards in sli (when nvidia releases 9x drivers...apparently)
f
 
I remember on another forum seeing someone who worked with x-ray images or something, to cut a lonn story short he had like 16gb ram with 8 opterons and 2 sli'd quatro's :D
 
tornadotsunamilife said:
I remember on another forum seeing someone who worked with x-ray images or something, to cut a lonn story short he had like 16gb ram with 8 opterons and 2 sli'd quatro's :D
Click to expand...
you must find this link.
 
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