Video card recommendation

[Michael]

Time to upgrade to a new computer, and the topic of video cards has come up. I could get a consumer level card like Nvidia or ATI, or a more workstation-class card dedicated to OpenGL (again, Nvidia or ATI). For those pros out there...is there any REAL advantage a workstation card gives verses a very high end consumer card? I have never had an issue working with consumer cards and was just wondering if I am missing something....are the workstation cards a bit more 'reliable' or 'stable' with Lightwave. And, what do I give up on the rest of my computer by having a workstation card (i.e. my Adobe video production stuff)?

Any insight with real world examples would certainly be helpful.

[hurleyman]

Everything I've heard says that workstation cards (like the Quadro) don't offer any noticeable improvement in performance unless you're doing something "really big." I haven't ever seen any benchmarks or demos, but I have noticed that my GeForce 8800 GS hiccups a little more than whatever William Vaughn is running in his video tutes. As for me, my card doesn't seem to have any trouble at all until I get to something like 100,000 polys and even then, it's only minor lag. 300,000 is still workable, but a bit tedious. I've loaded 1.5 million in Modeler before (a ZBrush .OBJ), but it took 30 seconds to refresh the perspective after rotating the camera. I hope those #'s help some...

[Michael]

It actually does help....now, for a bigger question....is the 'crossfire' or 'SLI' configs of some of the consumer cards a big deal when NOT playing video games. In other words, is there an across the board improvement in just Windows and its apps with dual video cards, or is that extra power only useful for games/apps written for dual cards?

[Hopper]

You do not get any benefit from SLI in general Windows applications. You will only see the benefit from full screen apps and currently about 98% of those are games.