[quoteHmmm... the professional cards from companies such as Matrox nowadays perform about the same as gaming cards such as the geforce series for the same price... and the gaming cards kick the professional cards at gaming... So really, if you want a professional card, it's just best to get a gaming card anyway[/quote]
Nope. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Gaming cards don't calculate images with the same level of precision internally. Examples of this are particularly evident in the SPEC_Viewperf PROcdrs, where a NURBS generated truck puts the graphics card through its' paces.
Even the latest geforce4 quadro has problems trimming the curves so there aren't any holes on its' highest detail setting
a 3Dlabs card optimised for proCDRS however will give you a nice, solid model, as will a FireGL card -- And thats just one example, others I can think of are window refresh problems, disappearing polygons, selection bracket problems, and texture stretching to name but a few.
If i'm a games player I can live with stretched textures, because it doesnt really matter unless you're a detail buff. However if i'm DESIGNING this level, i'll need to know that what the card is rendering is accurate, same thing with developers.
Develop for a buggy card or API and you're in for problems. Theres a reason the Oxygen VX1 is the reference win2k DX7/openGL1.1 video board
I've built...what about seven systems using ELSA gloria III's, Synergy 2000's (quadro2 based board), my own GVX1 pro based system and a wildcat 5000 system, plus i've used many more (well..about 40, but anyway)
All I can say that in terms of pro usage where accuracy is a MUST, you can't skimp on the price - and while I agree performance is important, the corners cut to get that performance are one step too far.
And don't even get me started on compatibility, Hardware certification and general driver stability.
If what you said was true the professional segment would be dead - admittedly there's nothing Nvidia would like more because its the one place their cards don't dominate (and if their cards DID dominate, the segment would be dead, because nobody would have a better product to compare their blurry, out of place texures to).
It's a VERY good thing to make sure the pro segment stays in the hands of the engineers, there's a reason Alpha workstations and the like don't use quadros instead of E&S/wildcat/proprietry cards!
