When would you need...

[kid908]

... a Quadro FX 5800? I'm looking at the specs and damn :ohdear: I'm afraid of that thing. So what would be a situation where you would need such a card? After all it is ~3100USD.

For those who don't know what it is: http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_quadro_fx_5800_us.html

[Jean-Luc]

It's fantastic for people who work heavily in the digital arts, especially when it comes to realtime visualizations.

[sdavis117]

For graphics designers, not gamers.

That thing wont help you in games that much.

[Bhamid]

Quadros are for CAD work, Geforce is for gaming.

[Warsaw]

From a technical standpoint, Quadros are usually a half-step behind their GeForce counterparts; the primary differences between the two are different BIOS configurations and higher quality drivers that place more emphasis on OpenGL than on DirectX. One way to get a cheap "Quadro" is to flash the equivalent GeForce with a Quadro BIOS and install the appropriate drivers.

So really, most of that price is for customer experience/service, not the card itself.

[Abdurahman]

Yeah Warsaw is right. Look at the specs and they are equivalent to GEforce cards from a hardware standpoint. This Quadro 5800 is equivalent to a gtx 280. Both have 240 cores and 512 bit memory bus.

[legionaire45]

I think with recent ones they do change the hardware around a bit - usually add more ram and some other nick-nacks.

The main difference is drivers and bios as someone else mentioned.

TESLA boards are quite a bit different - they remove the NVIO chips and most of the stuff that has to do with video output. Usually put insane amounts of ram in.

[Cortexian]

So to answer your question: You, the end-user, never ever need a Quadro card. Your 3D and high-end visual effects studio does.

[Warsaw]

Oh you...

:haw:

[Phopojijo]

They would probably also make large-matrix ~4GB linear algebra really nice too... so scientists might like it... especially with the added stability (if for some reason they don't go Tesla).

[=sw=warlord]

They would probably also make large-matrix ~4GB linear algebra really nice too... so scientists might like it... especially with the added stability (if for some reason they don't go Tesla).
I seem to remember the medical research sector use these things as well.

[Cortexian]

Our school had a PC workstation with two Quadro cards for video rendering and 3D stuff. It was epicly fast compared to the other cards.