which graphic card serie Workstation or Gaming?

[Giovanni Azua]

Hello all,

I have been comparing the two ATI series also the
equivalent NVidia and can not figure out what are
the major differences between the Workstation
and Gaming series?

One main difference is obvious: price tag

I have a DELL Worstation 670 with 64-bit extensions
and PCI-Express graphic port and would like to upgrade
it with the most powerful and reasonably priced Graphic
Card but I am affraid of selecting the cheaper Gaming
models serie and then realizing it would not perform
as well as the Workstation model ...

My needs?

- Software Development
- Database Development
- Gaming Half-Life 2/Counter-Strike/AOM/etc
- No CAD applications
- Support for different OS(s): XP, Linux, Unix, Solaris 4 Intel.

My Workstation shipped bundled with an ATI Fire V3100 I
did not want to ask DELL for a different one because they
would most likely overprice it, I decided to get the cheapest
bundled from DELL and upgrade later on.

TIA,
Best Regards,
Giovanni

 

[Conor]

Hello all,

I have been comparing the two ATI series also the
equivalent NVidia and can not figure out what are
the major differences between the Workstation
and Gaming series?

One main difference is obvious: price tag

I have a DELL Worstation 670 with 64-bit extensions
and PCI-Express graphic port and would like to upgrade
it with the most powerful and reasonably priced Graphic
Card but I am affraid of selecting the cheaper Gaming
models serie and then realizing it would not perform
as well as the Workstation model ...

My needs?

- Software Development
- Database Development
- Gaming Half-Life 2/Counter-Strike/AOM/etc
- No CAD applications
- Support for different OS(s): XP, Linux, Unix, Solaris 4 Intel.

My Workstation shipped bundled with an ATI Fire V3100 I
did not want to ask DELL for a different one because they
would most likely overprice it, I decided to get the cheapest
bundled from DELL and upgrade later on.

Go for the gaming one. You only need the workstation one if you use
CAD.

If you intend using Linux, go for a nVIDIA one for better driver
support.

 

[Luc Monod]

Hello all,

I have been comparing the two ATI series also the
equivalent NVidia and can not figure out what are
the major differences between the Workstation
and Gaming series?

One main difference is obvious: price tag

I have a DELL Worstation 670 with 64-bit extensions
and PCI-Express graphic port and would like to upgrade
it with the most powerful and reasonably priced Graphic
Card but I am affraid of selecting the cheaper Gaming
models serie and then realizing it would not perform
as well as the Workstation model ...

My needs?

- Software Development
- Database Development
- Gaming Half-Life 2/Counter-Strike/AOM/etc
- No CAD applications
- Support for different OS(s): XP, Linux, Unix, Solaris 4 Intel.

My Workstation shipped bundled with an ATI Fire V3100 I
did not want to ask DELL for a different one because they
would most likely overprice it, I decided to get the cheapest
bundled from DELL and upgrade later on.

TIA,
Best Regards,
Giovanni

Same,
Don't touch the professional video cards for gaming (Maybe the NVIDIA Quadro
would be ok). They are solely meant to be stable using 3D apps and are not
made to perform fps wise.
Anyway, FireGLs seem to always have bugs when running CAD applications and
suck for games (Precision 470 here, also w/ a V3100).

 

[Giovanni Azua]

Hi Luc,

Same, Don't touch the professional video cards for gaming
(Maybe the NVIDIA Quadro would be ok). They are solely meant
to be stable using 3D apps and are not made to perform fps wise.
Anyway, FireGLs seem to always have bugs when running CAD
applications and suck for games (Precision 470 here, also w/ a
V3100).

Thank you for the response, I somehow had already decided
to wait for the NVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra PCI-Express
with the 256MB GDDR3 to arrive to Switzerland or probably
could have it shipped to me from US.

My impression is the same about the ATI V3100, the games
look pretty bad, in fact it is the major bottleneck I have
in my Precision 670. I regret I didn't ask DELL to deliver
without Graphic card and get the 300CHF back ... but it's
too late already.

Best Regards,
Giovanni

 

[Benjamin Gawert]

Don't touch the professional video cards for gaming (Maybe the NVIDIA
Quadro would be ok). They are solely meant to be stable using 3D
apps and are not made to perform fps wise.

That's not true. I've been gaming with Quadro and FireGL cards for years...

The Nvidia Quadro and ATI FireGL use the same GPUs like the "gaming cards".
In games they perform the same like the cheaper consumer cards (Geforce and
Radeon). The only problem is the ATI FireGL driver which uses settings fixed
on "quality" which is slow and doesn't provide any tabs for changing any of
these settings. With utilities like RageTweaker You can change the settings
like You can do on a generic Radeon card. With the Nvidia drivers it's
different, with Quadro cards You get much more settings in the control
tab...

Both FireGL and Quadro perform equally well on Games like the corresponding
Geforce and Radeon models...

Anyway, FireGLs seem to always have bugs when running CAD
applications and suck for games (Precision 470 here, also w/ a V3100).

The ATI drivers always had problems with OpenGL. The FireGL drivers are
better than the Radeon drivers but still not as good as the drivers from
Nvidia...

Benjamin

 

[Benjamin Gawert]

I have been comparing the two ATI series also the
equivalent NVidia and can not figure out what are
the major differences between the Workstation
and Gaming series?

It's simple. The workstation cards offer certified drivers (which You need
if You want support from Your vendor of Your CAD software), several features
needed in the professional market (i.e. antialiased lines, multipipe output
with PCIe cards, etc), a very good analog signal quality (to avoid blurry
pictures on a big crt), and a very hig price...

From a technical point of view the FireGL and Quadro cards are almost
identical to the Radeon and Geforce models...

One main difference is obvious: price tag

I have a DELL Worstation 670

a Dell Precision 670...

with 64-bit extensions
and PCI-Express graphic port and would like to upgrade
it with the most powerful and reasonably priced Graphic
Card but I am affraid of selecting the cheaper Gaming
models serie and then realizing it would not perform
as well as the Workstation model ...

My needs?

- Software Development

no advantage with a professional gfx card

- Database Development

no advantage with a professional gfx card

- Gaming Half-Life 2/Counter-Strike/AOM/etc

no advantage with a professional gfx card (but no disadvantage, either)

- No CAD applications

so You don't use anything that would benefit from the additional features of
a professional gfx card...

- Support for different OS(s): XP, Linux, Unix, Solaris 4 Intel.

If You say Linux You want Nvidia. ATIs Linux drivers suck really badly...

My Workstation shipped bundled with an ATI Fire V3100 I
did not want to ask DELL for a different one because they
would most likely overprice it, I decided to get the cheapest
bundled from DELL and upgrade later on.

Right decision...

I bought a similar machine (HP xw8200 Dual XEON 3GHz EM64T w. PCIe) but
without gfx card. My previous workstations always had professional gfx cards
like the QuadroFX2000 and ATI FireGL X1-256p. They worked also very well for
gaming, but this time I bought a cheap PNY Verto Geforce6600GT card since at
the moment I saw no reason to spend that much money for a professional gfx
card. What should I say, the card also works perfectly with my CAD
applications, and it's fast enough even for the latest games. It has 2x DVI
outputs, has 3 years warranty, and also provides an excellent analog signal.

Of course a GF6800Ultra would be faster, but not that much faster than what
it is more expensive. IMHO the most attractive cards at the moment are the
GF6600GTs. And in the end it's better to buy a 6600GT now and a new card in
say two years than spending now the money for a 6800U and having to spend
money again in 3 years because the card gets too slow...

Benjamin

 

[Giovanni Azua]

Hello Benjaming,

Thank you very very much, you are indeed very well
informed on the subject I will follow your advice
and will go for the previous NVidia model 6600GT.

Many thanks,
Best Regards,
Giovanni

 

[J. Clarke]

Hello all,

I have been comparing the two ATI series also the
equivalent NVidia and can not figure out what are
the major differences between the Workstation
and Gaming series?

One main difference is obvious: price tag

The workstation boards are more likely to have dual DVI outputs, generally
have better-quality passive components (capacitors and the like), and
generally have firmware tuned for openGL rather than Direct3D. Other than
that they're pretty much the same--if you compare some models of consumer
and workstation board you'll find that the circuit board itself is
identical.

I have a DELL Worstation 670 with 64-bit extensions
and PCI-Express graphic port and would like to upgrade
it with the most powerful and reasonably priced Graphic
Card but I am affraid of selecting the cheaper Gaming
models serie and then realizing it would not perform
as well as the Workstation model ...

My needs?

- Software Development

Unless you're developing graphics-intensive software the video board makes
little difference here, and if you are it should be typical of what you
expect your target market to be using.

- Database Development

Video board makes _no_ difference.

- Gaming Half-Life 2/Counter-Strike/AOM/etc

Definitely do not want a workstation board for this.

- No CAD applications

Removes the compatibility-with-CAD issue.

- Support for different OS(s): XP, Linux, Unix, Solaris 4 Intel.

This may end up the decision-making driver. Just about everything supports
XP. ATI and nvidia take different approaches to Linux support--nvidia's is
closed-source but pretty much fully supports the capabilities of their
chips, ATI has a closed-source driver that's so-so and on an intermittent
basis works with the developer community to allow open-source support for
their chips, but it generally doesn't happen while the chip is current. So
for Linux, if politics is more important to you than performance you'd want
to go ATI, while if performance is more important than politics you'd be
better off to go nvidia. Solaris you're likely on your own. As for Unix,
don't encourage SCO.

 

[Giovanni Azua]

Hello Clarke,

Many thanks for your exhaustive response!

I have had second thoughts about buying a previous
cheaper version of NVidia or ATI e.g. NVidia ASUS N6600GT
128MB, instead of upgrading to this one I would rather
stay with my current Fire V3100 4 pixel pipelines 128MB ...
if I want an upgrade I want an upgrade

Actually checking more in details the NVidia vs ATI I found
that ATI has more appealing numbers i.e.

"ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum" clock rate 520Mhz
"ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum" clock rate 540Mhz

vs

"NVidia 6800 Ultra" clock rate 400Mhz

Which somehow contradicts with your judgement that NVidia
is usually faster than ATI ... funnily I loaded my 3DMark
project for their latest benchmarking (I got 1180 score)
and reviewing others saw the topmost 12K score being NVidia
6800 Ultra, perhaps very few people have bought ATI latest
already ...

When the comparison comes to drivers availability I think this
changes continuosly ... I think is better getting the
most powerful card and wait for the drivers to upgrade than
getting great drivers support but then stay with the desire
of having the fastest card

What do you think?

Best Regards,
Giovanni

PS: Playing Counter-Strike with ATI V3100 (latest drivers XP) is
really frustrating ... the lagging is noticeably horrible.

 

[Giovanni Azua]

Hello Clarke,

Many thanks for your exhaustive response!

I have had second thoughts about buying a previous
cheaper version of NVidia or ATI e.g. NVidia ASUS N6600GT
128MB, instead of upgrading to this one I would rather
stay with my current Fire V3100 4 pixel pipelines 128MB ...
if I want an upgrade I want an upgrade

Actually checking more in details the NVidia vs ATI I found
that ATI has more appealing numbers i.e.

"ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum" clock rate 520Mhz
"ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum" clock rate 540Mhz

vs

"NVidia 6800 Ultra" clock rate 400Mhz

Which somehow contradicts with your judgement that NVidia
is usually faster than ATI ... funnily I loaded my 3DMark
project for their latest benchmarking (I got 1180 score)
and reviewing others saw the topmost 12K score being NVidia
6800 Ultra, perhaps very few people have bought ATI latest
already ...

When the comparison comes to drivers availability I think this
changes continuosly ... I think is better getting the
most powerful card and wait for the drivers to upgrade than
getting great drivers support but then stay with the desire
of having the fastest card

What do you think?

Best Regards,
Giovanni

PS: Playing Counter-Strike with ATI V3100 (latest drivers XP) is
really frustrating ... the lagging is noticeably horrible.

 

[Benjamin Gawert]

I have had second thoughts about buying a previous
cheaper version of NVidia or ATI e.g. NVidia ASUS N6600GT
128MB, instead of upgrading to this one I would rather
stay with my current Fire V3100 4 pixel pipelines 128MB ...
if I want an upgrade I want an upgrade

Well, the FireGL V3100 is basically a Radeon X300, and this chip is really
slow. The GF6600GT would be a really good upgrade...

BTW: don't get fooled by thoughts that only the latest and greatest cards
are worthy upgrades. It always has been the case that the top end cards are
the least that are worth their money. They are faster than midrange cards
but also much more important, and during their short life cycle usually
almost no games supports the features they offer...

Actually checking more in details the NVidia vs ATI I found
that ATI has more appealing numbers i.e.

"ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum" clock rate 520Mhz
"ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum" clock rate 540Mhz

vs

"NVidia 6800 Ultra" clock rate 400Mhz

Clock rate says nothing about performance. ATI Radeon and Nvidia Geforce6
are totally different GPUs which use different architecture, so a comparison
only regarding the clock rate is totally useless...

Which somehow contradicts with your judgement that NVidia
is usually faster than ATI ...

You can't says that Nvidia is faster than ATI since thats not true. You
can't says that ATI is faster than Nvidia since thats not true. But You will
find games in which one of them performs better than the other. Overall, the
performance between Nvidia and ATI is around the same level...

funnily I loaded my 3DMark
project for their latest benchmarking (I got 1180 score)
and reviewing others saw the topmost 12K score being NVidia
6800 Ultra, perhaps very few people have bought ATI latest
already ...

3DMark is a synthetic benchmark which says nothing about the real life
gaming performance...

When the comparison comes to drivers availability I think this
changes continuosly ... I think is better getting the
most powerful card and wait for the drivers to upgrade than
getting great drivers support but then stay with the desire
of having the fastest card

What do you think?

I think that this is a bad idea. The best gfx card is simply nothing without
good drivers. Drivers are not just some pieces of software that You need to
operate the card, they also decide if Your system performs good or not, or
if You get a lot of display errors in games or not. A ultra-fast card with
crappy drivers is useless...

You wrote You want Linux. Then You definitely don't want ATI. Their Linux
drivers have been crap for years now, and You have to be very optimistic to
believe that they will change that before Your new ATI card gets outdated
;-)

I think You first should ask Yourself what You really want. If You need some
kind of penis-enlargement-substitute to show off with then You definitely
want the latest and greatest Geforce or Radeon that's on the market. But if
You just want a powerful card that plays current games more than good enough
(and certainly does this for the games that appear in the next 12-18 month),
that works with Linux, does all You need, and that doesn't put a big hole
in Your pocket the GF6600GT is the best choice...

It always has been a wise idea not to buy the current crop of
ultra-expensive high end gaming cards but go for the midrange, and use the
saved money to replace the card more often. In the end You have much more
gaming fun and You also save a lot of money...

Benjamin

 

[Giovanni Azua]

Hi Benjamin,

Thanks again for your assistance ...

I had the NVidia GeForce 6600GT card yesterday in front
of me ... but what made me hesitate before buying it was
the fact that it only includes 128MB instead of 256MB.
I know that more is not necessarily better but I wonder
if the lack of 128MB would impact my experience gaming?
at the end I can not know how much of this RAM is being
actually used? by e.g. Counter-Strike, Half Life 2 ...

I have also searched all over internet and did not find
any GeForce 6600 featuring 256MB ...

Price-wise the difference is very heavy specially here in
Switzerland:

NVidia GeForce 6600GT : 300CHF
Nvidia GeForce 6800 xxx: +700CHF

meaning +350USD difference ...

Any ideas?

I would also like to know if you have any brand opinion
I would say ASUS is the best one ... isn't it?

Best Regards,
Giovanni

 

[RaceFace]

Hi Benjamin,

Thanks again for your assistance ...

I had the NVidia GeForce 6600GT card yesterday in front
of me ... but what made me hesitate before buying it was
the fact that it only includes 128MB instead of 256MB.
I know that more is not necessarily better but I wonder
if the lack of 128MB would impact my experience gaming?
at the end I can not know how much of this RAM is being
actually used? by e.g. Counter-Strike, Half Life 2 ...

I have also searched all over internet and did not find
any GeForce 6600 featuring 256MB ...

Price-wise the difference is very heavy specially here in
Switzerland:

NVidia GeForce 6600GT : 300CHF
Nvidia GeForce 6800 xxx: +700CHF

meaning +350USD difference ...

Any ideas?

I would also like to know if you have any brand opinion
I would say ASUS is the best one ... isn't it?

Best Regards,
Giovanni

In the current games out there (HL2, D3, etc) 128MB of Ram on the video card
will prevent you from using the high quality textures. They simply take up
too much room to fit comfortably in 128MB. Benchmarks on
www.tomshardware.com have shown this. As they increased resolution and/or
texture quality the performance of the 128MB 6600GT fell of noticably. That
said, if you're happy with using medium-quality textures, the card will
perform completely fine.

 

[Giovanni Azua]

Hi Luc,

Then again, you can always add more RAM in your DELL, up to 4GB...
I'm not sure how a PCI-Express graphic adapter accesses this memory though,
I'm so used to AGP Aperture.

I have 2GB RAM in my Precision 670 but no idea if the Graphic card
would ever use the RAM on board? btw I have found that XP 32-bits
doesn't "see" more than 3GB ... you would need XP 64-bits, I read
that in some DELL forum ...

Regards,
Giovanni

 

[Luc Monod]

I had the NVidia GeForce 6600GT card yesterday in front
of me ... but what made me hesitate before buying it was
the fact that it only includes 128MB instead of 256MB.
I know that more is not necessarily better but I wonder
if the lack of 128MB would impact my experience gaming?
at the end I can not know how much of this RAM is being
actually used? by e.g. Counter-Strike, Half Life 2 ...

I have also searched all over internet and did not find
any GeForce 6600 featuring 256MB ...

Best Regards,
Giovanni

Then again, you can always add more RAM in your DELL, up to 4GB...
I'm not sure how a PCI-Express graphic adapter accesses this memory though,
I'm so used to AGP Aperture.

 

[Benjamin Gawert]

I had the NVidia GeForce 6600GT card yesterday in front
of me ... but what made me hesitate before buying it was
the fact that it only includes 128MB instead of 256MB.

Yes, that's right. Only some (much slower) GF6600s (non-GT) offer 256MB...

I know that more is not necessarily better but I wonder
if the lack of 128MB would impact my experience gaming?
at the end I can not know how much of this RAM is being
actually used? by e.g. Counter-Strike, Half Life 2 ...

Well, with 128MB the high-res textures of some games don't fit in the cards
memory. This leads to texture swapping which was a huge performance hog on
AGP systems. With PCIe, texture swapping isn't that much of a problem like
it was with AGP...

I have also searched all over internet and did not find
any GeForce 6600 featuring 256MB ...

Simply because there aren't any...

Price-wise the difference is very heavy specially here in
Switzerland:

NVidia GeForce 6600GT : 300CHF
Nvidia GeForce 6800 xxx: +700CHF

meaning +350USD difference ...

Any ideas?

I would also like to know if you have any brand opinion
I would say ASUS is the best one ... isn't it?

I have a MSI NX6600GT and a PNY Verto 6600GT here. The MSI is crap, the
heatsink is cheap and doesn't cover GPU and memory correctly. The PNY card
is fine, and it offers a very good picture quality (important of You use a
crt!)...

Benjamin