What Does a High vs Low End Graphics Card Buy You?
Oct 29, 2003 1 Replies
E
Edge
What would be the capability and operational differences between an nVidia Geforce4 MX and Quadro750? I know the SW stated the Geforce4 works with limitation (can open limited accelerated windows), but what other differences? Speed, rendering quality, enabled features ?
TIA
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M
Mickey Reilley
The "limited accelerated windows" limitation of the GeForce4 cards is the killer for me. In my experience there is very little performance difference between the basic gamer card such as a GeForce4 vs. a CAD specific card such as a Quadro. I frequently have 10+ windows open (not all showing, but still all occupying video memory) and once I hit that magic number (which depends on how much memory your video card has and the complexity of the models you have open) SWX grinds to a halt. You can get around this problem with the SoftQuadro hack for a GeForce4, but in the end I saved money by spending $300 on the Quadro and being done with it for once and all. Yes, you can spend well over $1000 on some of the higher end CAD cards, but I think I've hit the point of diminishing returns at $300.
I have a Quadro 580XGL with 64MB video memory and have had zero problems. The performance is on par with my previously SoftQuadro'd GeForce4 but without the headaches of having to hack multiple workstations each time an OS upgrade or some other random software event kills the driver.
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