Gaming with professional graphics cards

[Quartz-1]

How do professional graphics cards (ATI FirePro, Nvidia Quadro etc) fare when it comes to games? Do games automatically benefit from features like 10 bit colour channels?

 

[xorbe]

Do you have a nice 10-bit NEC or Eizo panel with a greater-than-8-bit connection?

 

[kingdom9214]

Workhorses and play games fine just a $1000 dollar work card gaming is like a 300 dollar gaming card. So if you plan on buying one for work it will game ok. I wouldn't buy one to game with !

 

[Quartz-1]

Do you have a nice 10-bit NEC or Eizo panel with a greater-than-8-bit connection?

I've been lusting after the Hazro 10 bit 27" monitors just recently.

 

[450]

If you are actually noticing the differences in 8-bit and 10-bit panels in games, you probably aren't playing the game.

 

[Quartz-1]

Hehe!

I've read elsewhere that some TN displays don't really have a full 8 bits per colour channel. Certainly, I've seen banding on large colour expanses on some displays, mainly sea and sky.

 

[Fix Me]

I had always heard not to use professional cards for games. You'll get much better performance from a dedicated gaming card. That's not to say the professional card won't work at all, it just won't work as well as a gaming card.

 

[Vanquistador]

I have a similar situation. I have 4 Nvidia Quadro 1800 graphics cards not being used for anything. Could I put them to any use?

Any recommendations?

 

[kevineugenius]

I used to do it on my Dell Precision laptops. They had Quadro FX cards that supposedly were built off of the same exact chip as the Geforce cards, but they lacked full OpenGL support if I remember right. In benchmarks, you'd lose about 5% fps using the CAD version of the chip vs the gamer version. If you already have the GPU, sure go ahead and game with it. If building a gaming system and you want some extra bragging rights, it's completely worthless and people will laugh at you. $.02

 

[mannyman]

The reason you don't use Workstation GPUs is that they are made highly accurate flops so it processes slow so it can be more accurate.

Vanqisador you could sell it to me cheap ,I have a relative who plans on doing all the autocad stuff so it would be perfect.

 

[xorbe]

I have a similar situation. I have 4 Nvidia Quadro 1800 graphics cards not being used for anything. Could I put them to any use?

Send us some of those unused quadro cards, and we'll let you know ...

As I understand, extra precision is traded for less speed. Also, certain "high end" operations are fast (er, normal speed) on Quadro, and artificially slow on the gaming card (to make CAD people spend $$ on the CAD card.)

 

[MattyC]

I don't know of any benefits to using one (and I wouldn't imagine buying a pro card for gaming would be very smart) but they perform quite well. I have a Dell Precision with a 2GB ATI FirePro M8900 and it is quite powerful for gaming as far as laptops go. I would assume the desktop cards would be the same.

 

[Gnasher]

Hehe!

I've read elsewhere that some TN displays don't really have a full 8 bits per colour channel. Certainly, I've seen banding on large colour expanses on some displays, mainly sea and sky.

Not just some, pretty much all gaming level TN panels are just 6bit. How else do you think they get 2 - 5ms response time?

 

[Saturn_V]

The workstation in my office is a Dell Precision T1500, and it came with a 512MB Quadro FX 580 (entry level Quadro). I occasionally sneak some TF2 after work.

My ancient 8800GT is a better gaming card than this Quadro. Hell, I'd sneak that old card in if I could.

 

[wEvil]

Workstation graphics cards have typically underperformed their desktop/enthusiast-targeted brethren since the days of SGI workstations and 3Dlabs GLiNT-based cards.

Most workstation boards are build off exactly the same silicon as desktop boards, the differences being lower clocks for greater stability/longer lifetime, more stringent certification procedures on both the drivers and hardware and typically more on-board memory.

Unless you require certain specific features that are offered by workstation cards, which typically feature application-specific optimizations (and there is no reason these can't be enabled on a desktop card, other than allowing the manufacturer to charge an insane price premium..) then you're better off getting a top-end enthusiast card which will perform the same or better for a fraction of the price.

As for 10-bit color channels, I wouldn't be surprised if that will be the next big push.. in fact, it's something I will be disappointed about if the Southern Islands or Kepler cards omit from their feature sets.

 

[MattyC]

Workstation graphics cards have typically underperformed their desktop/enthusiast-targeted brethren since the days of SGI workstations and 3Dlabs GLiNT-based cards.

Most workstation boards are build off exactly the same silicon as desktop boards, the differences being lower clocks for greater stability/longer lifetime, more stringent certification procedures on both the drivers and hardware and typically more on-board memory.

I have hardly bothered to put it through its paces with some crazy demanding games or anything, but mine was able to max out StarCraft 2 at 1920x1080 just fine. That said yeah there is no reason to get one unless you actually need one for something else. They aren't gaming cards.