NVIDIA Quadro FX 3450

T

Tri_Havoc

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I'm planning on building a gaming PC after I am done with my deployment and I lucked into some parts yesterday. They are not what what I was planning on buying but as they are free the price is right. Yesterday I received a Quadro FX 3450, a E6700 Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of ram and 2 optical drives. I might even wind up getting a hard drive and another 3450 so I can SLI the two of them. All in all a good day I have to admit.

Now I know the 3450's are designed for CAD and graphic design but what I am curious about is if they can handle that how will they handle being used for gaming.

Anybody got some information or ideas?

Thanks
 
quickie: what do Quadros have for CAD that normal vidcards don't?
 
Arnge said:
short answer

NO
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Um, actually you can use Quadro's to game, they just won't perform quite as fast as their GeForce counterparts.

The Quadro 3450 is roughly the exact same card as a 6800GS with the exception of drivers.

They are decent cards, but don't expect anything amazing on your games. If you play HL2 or Doom 3, you should be fine. But if you are looking to play Bioshock or Crysis with any decent resolutions or settings, you need a better card, even for DX9. With this card, you won't be able to play at anything above 1024x768 with these games on medium settings (while getting decent FPS).

The card really was designed for 3D CAD and animation programs, it wasn't optimized for gaming. I gamed on a FX540 (equivalent to the 6600), and it ran about 5-10 frames slower than the equivalent 6600 did.

Not to mention, the drivers won't be optimized to run most (if any) games, so the GeForce line will have superior drivers for gaming.

Don't get me wrong, the Quadro's aren't bad cards, they just weren't designed for gaming.

If you can, sell that card for a mint and go get yourself a decent modern gaming card from either Series 7 or 8 (or a X1900XT/Pro).

Since that card is using the same architecture as the Series 6 cards, it won't have PureVideo (1 or 2), so video editing in HD such as H.264 or HD-WMV is out. You can, but I wouldn't recommend it.
 
Red Falcon provided some good info.

He's right too.

Technically, the Quadro series has some minor hardware differences as well, extra shaders and pipes. OpenGL optimization.

If you're working in 3D Studio Max you'll be provided with special viewport options that increase real time rendering and shading ability.

From a gaming aspect, you should be able to play most games at lower resolutions just fine.

At the same time, your card still sells for around $750 or so, with that, you could sell it off and buy a nice shiny new GTX and then some.
 
Specificly, the reason a Quadro runs somewhat slower than the equivilent GeForce is that for profesional graphics users perfect image quality is the most important factor and as a result the calculations used in rendering are optimized for minimal error levels not maximum speed.
 
Thanks everybody. That is exactly the info that I was looking for. I might try and get the other one and ebay them both and then SLI two high end cards. Now I just gotta figure out how I'm gonna deal with the extra heat.

Once again thanks for the info.
 
I actually had a quadr FX3500 and I am 100% positive that my 7900GS was way way way way better for gaming . With the FX I had problems playing FIFA
 
Sell it and buy a geforce. Trust me, you won't get the same support you would with Geforce... the drivers are often different in that they don't allow you to install the normal geforce drivers, and those are the drivers that pick up all the application fixes and optimizations for running games. And some of those are critical fixes. Stick with the cards that are supported for the correct purpose, instead of cards that have hardware for drawing lines very accurately and quickly (CAD work).

SLI with those is a bad idea (assuming it even works), because it's paying a premium for something that the cards aren't meant to do. Sell it and get 2 Geforce cards.

You're talking about getting a second $700-$1000 card? You're psycho. Get cards that were intended for gaming. Especially if you're going to put money into this. Don't let something that was free deter you from getting the right thing.

If you find 1 problem with the game, you can't really expect it to ever be fixed as games aren't supported on those cards.
 
Sr7, you missed one small point in my initial post. The reason I asked this question is because I can get everything I listed for FREE. I wondered how good they might be because even though I am about to get done with a deployement to Afghanistan and I do have some expendable cash, Tax free zones + hostile fire pay + separation pay for being away from my wife is kinda nice. Anyhow, my point was is it worth keeping over buying another, likely expensive video card or two.
 
Tri_Havoc said:
Sr7, you missed one small point in my initial post. The reason I asked this question is because I can get everything I listed for FREE. I wondered how good they might be because even though I am about to get done with a deployement to Afghanistan and I do have some expendable cash, Tax free zones + hostile fire pay + separation pay for being away from my wife is kinda nice. Anyhow, my point was is it worth keeping over buying another, likely expensive video card or two.
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I didn't miss it... I said get it and sell it. That's my point. I don't care if it's free, it's more hassle than it's worth if it doesn't work properly and you're stuck with cards that don't have driver support for our favorite games.

How do I know? Because I too have a Quadro sitting here that I got for free..

If I bought a ford pinto that had 1 smoke stack exhaust on it but not the other, does it make it any more useful to me to put a second smokestack on it because I can get it for free and it will make it symmetrical? No.. sell it and get a real exhaust that will work right for my application :)
 
Tri_Havoc said:
Sr7, you missed one small point in my initial post. The reason I asked this question is because I can get everything I listed for FREE. I wondered how good they might be because even though I am about to get done with a deployement to Afghanistan and I do have some expendable cash, Tax free zones + hostile fire pay + separation pay for being away from my wife is kinda nice. Anyhow, my point was is it worth keeping over buying another, likely expensive video card or two.
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Get the stuff for free its worth it. then when your back home sell those FX xards for some geforce cards.

I dont think most people understand just how much those quadros are worth the cheapest FX3450 i found was a refurbished one for $399. So if you sell it you should be able to get a decent gaming card.
 
GeForce/Quadro's/Tessla chips come the same die (assuming were talking about the same G80 core). Its the bios and the binning process that seperates the chips. In an over simplified manner should one chip test well for Quadro scenario's rather than GeForce or Tesla scenario's it gets stamped as a Quadro chip. The GeForce chip has all the same tracings as the Quadro and Tessla chips...technology specific to Quadro's/Tessla's are disabled via bios and vice versa. So what makes the GeForce faster for gaming over the Quadro is disabled.

Quadro's go through specific testing to be certified with applications quadro's are targeted for.
 
kuyaglen said:
GeForce/Quadro's/Tessla chips come the same die (assuming were talking about the same G80 core). Its the bios and the binning process that seperates the chips. In an over simplified manner should one chip test well for Quadro scenario's rather than GeForce or Tesla scenario's it gets stamped as a Quadro chip. The GeForce chip has all the same tracings as the Quadro and Tessla chips...technology specific to Quadro's/Tessla's are disabled via bios and vice versa. So what makes the GeForce faster for gaming over the Quadro is disabled.

Quadro's go through specific testing to be certified with applications quadro's are targeted for.
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...and their drivers are more optimized for certain programs (CAD, 3D Studio Max, etc).

Otherwise the hardware is nearly the same. A Quadro FX 3450 is basically a GeForce 6800GS (specs wise), the only difference is the 3450 has 8 pixel pipes, the 6800GS has 12 (among a few other hardware differences). Specs wise, they are exactly the same.

So drivers are more than 50% of the difference with hardware filling in the rest.
 
Red Falcon said:
...and their drivers are more optimized for certain programs (CAD, 3D Studio Max, etc).

Otherwise the hardware is nearly the same. A Quadro FX 3450 is basically a GeForce 6800GS (specs wise), the only difference is the 3450 has 8 pixel pipes, the 6800GS has 12 (among a few other hardware differences). Specs wise, they are exactly the same.

So drivers are more than 50% of the difference with hardware filling in the rest.
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But the problem is you're getting a card worth a lot of money in the CAD market, but not worth a lot in the gaming market (slow for gaming), and you want to play games. So get the cards, exploit them (sell them in the CAD market where they're worth something), then you have money for the gaming market :)
 
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