What's the diff. between pro and desktop 3D cards?

J

JediFonger

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is there a diff.? from what i've been reading some of the gf fx and gf6 are exactly identical in terms of hardware and all it takes is a bios flash/or rivatuner to trick the driver for a desktop card to be a dcc card.

let's say you wanna use Maya or 3D Studio Max to render an army of 1,000 (or whatever # it takes to tax a pro-card but will choke the desktop card) orcs (like Lord of the Rings). does this mean that using a quadro card will make it possible but using a desktop gf6 card is harder? is that true?
 
While it's true that nVIDIA would like you to think that the Quadro is completely different, they essentially are the highest quality BIN's of the current GPU's. nVIDIA has extra capabilities in the cores that are then deactivated on the GPU's used for consumer video cards. Kinda like how the pixel and vertex shaders are reduced in some lower end of the 6800's.

What does change the package is the absolute quality they instill into their professional drivers and OpenGL support. If you thought the OpenGL drivers for the consumer boards where great, then you'll be really amazed with the Pro drivers. Note though, the enhancements are primarily for CAD purposes and don't necessarily enhance gaming, so going pro to enhance FPS in your latest game is not going to yield much if any difference.

So the Pro boards, and supposed modded Geforce to Quadro boards (latest I heard was older gen GPU's, I'm not certain about the success of the latest gen for the conversion) will receive performance boosts in 3DMAX, etc.

But! Consumer level cards on the high-end will do very well in the CAD arena now as well. The lines between the two are really blurring. A lot of the difference in cost will be the licensing to use the Professional drivers fine tuned for CAD purposes.

We use Solidworks at work and Solidworks will support consumer cards as well, but only certifies certain driver revisions. You can find out more details at the sites of those programs.
 
that's what i thought.

in another words, there isn't a threshold where the desktop video card can't handle a certain amount of heavy geometry and the pro cards can, correct? I'm referring specifically to the GeForce6 series and Quadro4 or QuadroFX (since ATI's pro3D cards are a wee bit weaker).

So if one buys a GF6 series and uses Rivatuner to install the Pro drivers, they can do DCC as well as play games?
 
yes... I am living that dream right now!

hehe...

any nv40 based card can be softmodded for sure. and it does make a night and day difference in the right apps... and the 2fps you lose in gaming is not even noticable.

I use 3dsMAX and could not live without a quadro. to give you an example, a quadro based on the geforceFX 59xx cards is faster in MAX then a 7800GTX in gamer mode. and noticably so.
 
The Pro cards tend to mainly support OpenGL graphics standard, which professional software such as CAD (computer aided design, or drafting), computer graphics and animation, while the Desktop 3D, or Game Cards tend to mainly support the DirectX graphic standard.

There have been OpenGL games, but most are DirectX.

I don't know of any professional software that supports DirectX, though I could be wrong.
 
well, that's all i need to know =). thx.

i've always thought about dabbling in 3D, but always thought my 9800xt or x850xt pe could be lacking.

ah well. just need to know, thanks.
 
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