Pro vs Consumer graphics performance

[malexander]

Since the question of whether to go with a professional graphics card (Nvidia Quadro, AMD/ATI FireGL) or a consumer gaming card is asked a lot, here are some performance numbers to showcase the difference (courtesy of Tom's Hardware).

Quadro vs. GEForce

FireGL vs. Radeon

In both cases, the hardware is similar (though in both cases the memory is clocked lower on the pro card). The pro cards offer about 4x more performance - of course, they also cost about 4x more as well. The pro card drivers also tend to be a bit more stable than gaming cards, though with a little work you can usually find a gaming driver version that works well with all your apps.

Note that while Houdini was not included in the benchmarks, you can see the general trend.

So, there is a noticeable difference, but is it worth it? Well, I guess that's up to you to decide

[Guest Swann]

Compare values of Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 to cheap QuadroFX 570. 570 is cheaper than 280 and still has more than 2 times better (theoretical) perfomance.

[splitpoint]

That's a great link, thanks for posting. It proved some of my observations when swapping out the Geforce card for a Firegl v3600 last year. That Firegl card was best $150 that I ever spent.

[Guest Swann]

BTW. look here Houdini Bench. Question is, how much changed from those days.

Edited April 15, 2009 by SWANN

[sibarrick]

We use the Quadro 570's and it just my untested feeling that they are more stable and perform better with houdini than the gaming versions which we used to use a lot. They seem to give far better performance when you are pushing them really hard, at the simpler end of things they feel much the same.

[malexander]

BTW. look here Houdini Bench. Question is, how much changed from those days.

In a word, lots

The OpenGL rendering pipeline has been revamped in H9 and further improvements are slated for 10. Graphics cards are also drastically different, so it'd be very interesting to see another bench.