The difference between quadro and geforce?

[luisffonseca]

I have been wondering lately what the real difference is between the two when it comes to maya. I had heard the quadro cards have speacial plugins and programs made for maya and other 3d apps, but what exactly do they do? I figure they help you preview bump mapping and stuff in the viewport, but what do I know . If what they do is help viewport rendering, why can't they make lower versions of these plugins for geforce cards?

[jeffd]

The big difference is that the Quadro's are officially qualified for Maya due the support for hardware overlay planes. The GeForce line doesn't have this. More stuff here...

http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/Community...maya\_45\_NT.html

The display essentially the same in 90% of use but the GF cards can be a bit bug prone. Depending on your usage, GFs do the job. Most studios (in games) that I know use GF cards across the boards and complaints are few.

--JeffD

[deke-kincaid]

With the gforce 1+2+3 it was the same chip with more professional drivers. Now with the GF4 line of cards, the highend versions of the quadro is actually a different chip that is much faster than the GF line(quadro 750, 900, 980). The lowend quadro(380, 550, 580, 700?) are just like the older quadros where they are just GF4 cards with more professional drivers. I think the quadro 380(possibly the 550 also) is a gf4mx, which is not much faster than a gf2.

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=quadro4xgl

[gnimmel]

The other difference no one has mentioned yet is hardware alpha channels. The GF dosen't have them while the Quadro does. If you are ever planning on using the hardware renderer for things like particles, then you will need a Quadro.

Richard

[luisffonseca]

well that explains a few things