I’d just like to throw something out there to see what common opinion is at the moment…
As a company we’ve always used Nvidia Quadros in various forms. I think most of us are using Quadro FX4600 (our machines are Dell Precisions). Now we recently replaced one of our older cards with an Asus 8800GTX… the thing is that it seems to be out performing our Quadros.. and it’s a quarter of the price. Has anyone had any similar experiences? or shed some light as on the subject?
We did a great deal of testing through quadro’s, ATI fire GL’s (Even with massive discount) and the 8800 GTX cards, with the latter coming out well on top.
If youre going for a full update, use the money saved and upgrade your processors.
I’ve always been an ATI fan and I use a EAH2900 XT and I’m very happy with it. I wont mind the latest FireGL just “because its the latest and the fastest graphics card available”.
However this dont mean jack as MAX dont seem to use the power of workstation cards and you’re better off getting the best games card you can get and then use the remaining cash as cubiclegangster said to get better CPU’s or more RAM.
i think it depends on your OS. Are you talking 32 bit or 64 bit? Are you talking XP or Vista? I have a quadro fx 3500 on a 64 bit vista OS and it is without question the weakest card for the most money that i have ever had.
mh