# Solved: NVIDIA Quadro 600 or ATI FirePro V4800?



## :z: (Feb 27, 2008)

Hi,

I'm trying to decide which graphics card to get for our new office computers. We've always used NVIDIA's Quadro line in the past and those have worked very well because NVIDIA provides drivers specifically designed for use with AutoCAD (we do both 2D & 3D). Now ATI has drivers out designed to work with AutoCAD, and the V4800 card supports up to three 30" monitors while the 600 only supports two. It would be really nice to have that third monitor without having to add another GPU, but I'm hesitant because I don't know how the drivers from the two companies compare. Every comparison I could find was comparing the FirePro line without their new drivers. So I have two questions:

1) Which card is the better one spec-wise? They seem to be talking two different languages on their websites, so I'm really having a hard time comparing them. I know very little about graphics cards.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product-quadro-600-us.html
http://www.amd.com/us/products/workstation/graphics/ati-firepro-3d/v4800/pages/v4800.aspx

2) Which card is better once the AutoCAD drivers have been accounted for?

Again, our primary application is using AutoCAD (both 2D & 3D). We also use Photoshop (2D only) and Acrobat extensively, but from what I understand, unless you're doing 3D Photoshopping, the GPU doesn't help out with that. These machines will not be used for gaming and we're only interested in professional-grade graphics cards designed for use with AutoCAD.

Thanks!


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## getsugatenso (Dec 20, 2008)

by the looks of things the quadro would be better since the openGL standard is up to 4 whereas the amd one is at 3.2.
but i would go for the amd one, it is more suited to autoCAD
the nvidia one would suit the video creation/editing side of industry plus if you get two active display port adapters with eyefinity you could increase the workspace and have cheap monitors with DVI ports rather than the professional grade display port monitors.
*hope it helps just in time*


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## :z: (Feb 27, 2008)

Getsugatenso, thanks for the reply. I think I've followed most of your reply, but I'm confused where you say the Quadro is technically better but the FirePro is better for AutoCAD. In my experience, NVIDIA has long had AutoCAD performance drivers to enhance the AutoCAD experience, whereas ATI is new to this particular area of focus, so how exactly is the FirePro card better for use with AutoCAD?

And I'm not worried about connectivity. We'd be ordering new Dell Ultrasharp 30" monitors which have ample connections. Where the ATI card would come in handy is that we could hook up two 30" monitors and then hook up one of our old 24" monitors as well.


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## getsugatenso (Dec 20, 2008)

i had a look at a video 



also if i remember correctly, quadro's previous generation concentrated on C programming graphics cards[thats why the one in the video becomes very jerky when rotating the model] its not the same program i know but the numbers that the card will crunch will be similar in autocad. im seeing firepro as the better card since it does have pretty much the same specification as the quadro, except for the openGL bit and that the firepro runs on GDDR5 as appose to GDDR3
nvidia do physically block the capability of graphics cards and they run much hotter than the AMD equivalent. [heat degenerates the component over time]


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## :z: (Feb 27, 2008)

Those are actually previous-generation mid-level cards the video is showing. The new NVIDIA cards blow the old ones away (from what I understand, the entry-level $160 Quadro 600 compares to the previous-generation $400 mid-level Quadro FX 1700). I'm not sure about the newer ATI ones, though. Also, it didn't look like the tests in the video were using AutoCAD, so the cards wouldn't have benefited from that boost.

I'm really looking for some way to compare the current entry-level cards I listed for both their raw performance and their performance enhancements with AutoCAD-specific drivers. Everything I could find was either comparing old generation cards, old generation drivers, or both. But if I understood what you initially wrote, the Quadro 600 is better than the FirePro V4800 spec-wise, correct?

Thanks


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## :z: (Feb 27, 2008)

I'm still trying to get an answer to these two questions if anyone is able to help:

1) Which card is the better one spec-wise? They seem to be talking two different languages on their websites, so I'm really having a hard time comparing them. I know very little about graphics cards.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product-quadro-600-us.html
http://www.amd.com/us/products/works...ges/v4800.aspx

2) Which card is better once the AutoCAD drivers have been accounted for?


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## getsugatenso (Dec 20, 2008)

ati firepro's spec is better, they both have the same openGL version, was just written wrong on the datasheet for some reason... the ati card should be able to work faster than the quadro with a memory bandwidth of 57.6 GB/s as appose to the quadro's 25.6 GB/s. even to this day i dont know what the hell a cuda core is...
both graphics cards have specially written drivers, ati has some plugins for autocad and 3ds to optimize the card even further.
both have 3 years warrenty, gpu core clock is at 400mhz.
looks as though quite a few dell precision machines run more ati cards than quadro cards for entry level machines
and if your motherboard supports crossfire X then if in future you wanted a small upgrade you can crossfire 2 or 3 cards, a single card option for the quadro (no multi GPU solution possible)
ati v4800 is a better choice than quadro 600.


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## :z: (Feb 27, 2008)

Thanks, getsugatenso! That answers my first question more clearly -- sorry I wasn't following earlier.

As to my second question, I don't think there's any way to see who has the better drivers for AutoCAD without actually testing the two cards side-by-side, but drivers can (and are) updated, so even if the ATI's AutoCAD drivers lag behind NVIDIA's somewhat now, there's a very good chance they'll be updated at some point to provide further enhancements. Better to have the more powerful card installed because it's much easier to update the drivers than to replace a GPU!

In light of that, I think it makes more sense to go with the FirePro V4800.

Thanks again for your help.


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