Quadro/Tesla vs GeForce for Game Dev

microzett

Hello,

The popular opinion is that GeForce cards are for gaming and Quadros for "professional" use and CAD.

I don't adopt any of this opinions. I believe that at a certain level of designing, or for the "average" user, It doesn't make any difference at all.

I'm currently using a GeForce GTX 470 which I have from my college times and I use it for 3Ds Max, Zbrush and soon with Unreal Engine 4. It did the work very good for me so far, but I will upgrade it on the coming weeks or so.
I have to say that "GeForce" has served me well all this time but I'm considering a GeForce and Tesla combination (both used) for my upgrade.

So my point is, does a Game Developer (or an aspiring one) should have a good Gaming OR a good Designing PC?

What is your experience or personal preference? What do Game Studios prefer?

.nL

It generally doesn't matter too much. So far as I understand, Quadros have a higher floating-point accuracy than GeForce cards, which is only really necessary in fairly niche situations.

EarthQuake

Yeah, don't bother with Quadros etc, its not worth the money. Get something like a Geforce 970 or 960.

Kwramm

yup. not worth the money. We just got lots of Quadros at the studio because Dell keeps selling those precision workstations with them. In game dev practice there's no real difference you'll notice with the latest drivers.

JonathanLambert

It doesn't matter with game development but it makes a huge difference with CAD programs. Plant 3d and AutoCad do not perform very well on my gaming card.

passerby

Best off with a geforce, quadros are not useful in game dev in most situations and teslas are only useful if you are doing texture and lightmap baking with cuda. Which even using a modern geforce card for cuda it will be fast enough anyways.

Veezen

Don't buy Quadro card. These cards make a lot of problems when you work in non-CAD softwares. I had Quadro 4000 in job and it was painful to use - high temperature, windows crashing and random system restart when you work on big scenes in 3DS Max. Now I have Quadro 5000 and it works much better but I wouldn't buy that card for myself.

microzett

Thank you all for your replies. Looks like my assumptions are confirmed.

I'm not very much into offline rendering and Arch Vis. In fact, I'm not at all.

I found used an 680 and 770 which are more or less the same. I can't afford 970