Graphics Cards

[PJ]

What is the main difference between a workstation videocard and a gaming graphics card?

[SteveMann]

Gaming cards focus on rendering for games and vector graphics, which is not likely to be what a video render needs.

On the other hand, I use Sony Vegas which doesn’t have any graphics card requirements.

But wait, in a few months Intel will be releasing the Sandy Bridge line of processors as the successors to the i3, i5 and i7 chips, which will have the GPU on the die. Things are gonna get interesting.

[Rob]

I’m not a gamer, but I’ll take a shot at this.

My guess is that a gaming graphics card is a GPU – the hardware that you connect your computer monitor to.

The “workstation videocard,” or I/O card, is the point of inputting or outputting a video signal to VTRs, broadcast monitors, and cameras. The video connections are professional connections, including HD-SDI, HDMI, Component, XLR, and so on. Some examples are the AJA Kona, Matrox MXO2, and BlackMagic Design Intensity

[210pe]

In the engineering world “workstation” class cards have a different set of drivers then “gaming” cards. nVidia has their “Geforce” line of “gaming” cards and their “Quadra” class of workstation cards for years. Everything I have ever read basically says you pay for the certified drivers and support with the workstation cards. For example. Autodesk products will report that you are not using proper hardware if you use a Geforce card but it has no issues with the corresponding Quadra card with the same engine and memory. This seems to be less of an issue with Win7.SteveMann is correct in that Sony Veags doesn’t seem to specify a certain card, on the other hand, Adobe is recommending the CUDA certified cards for After Effects, etc. I just recently built a new system. To be safe I went with an nVidia GeForce GTX 285 which is CUDA certified for Adobe. Vegas seems to love it and my engineering programs are not coughing at it either.

[Author]

Posts