ATI FirePro or Quadro

[AeroNucDef]

Hi all

I've been asked by my boss which card is better for 200+ part assemblies. I've looked on the SWx website and I've done a google search, but I thought I would be better to ask on here.

There are only these cards that he wants to consider (I don't know why)

AMD FIREPRO V4800 1GB DDR5 PCI-EX16

or

Nvidia Quadro FX 1800


So which ones handles medium to large assemblies better?

thanks

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

It pays not to get into religious arguments on Eng-Tips.

People who like ATI/AMD will swear that their cards are best.
People who like nVidia will swear that their cards are best.

 

[JMirisola]

Pretty much agree with CBL. It's six of one, half dozen of the other.

I say flip a coin. Best 2 out of 3.

Jeff Mirisola, CSWP
Design Manager/Senior Designer
M9 Defense
My Blog

 

[steinmini]

I would consider best compatibility of the card with the motherboard's chipset, CPU and memory.
At the end, it will always work, however, just like some motherboards simply don't work properly with some memories (meaning RAM), it may happen that the AMD chipset based motherboard will prefer an ATI GPU. Not a rule, but it happens that sometimes there are conflicts... If I knew this, what I know now, I'd either pick an Intel based MB and then buy my Quadro, or go for an ATI card. But I was on a very limited budget and had to pick the cheaper. So, ended up with an AMD based MB and nVidia GPU.
Works fine, but it happens often that the GPU (or the drivers for the GPU) make the startup "hang" and the screen stops at "Starting Windows" while the sound indicates the Windows actually properly loaded and started up... After a lot of investigation, found out the thing on the top of my comment...

 

[AeroNucDef]

Thanks for all the replies.


steinmini,

The PC has a Intel Chip (forgot which one) and 3gb of ram.

I've just been informed that my boss is going with the ATI card, I think he's going for that one because it's cheaper.

Hopefully it will be OK with assemblies.

 

[steinmini]

Basically, it should do just fine. I would suggest (if I may) that after the GPU has been installed, a qualified person checks the performance and behavior of the machine, all together. With the properly installed adequate drivers and parameters properly set in the BIOS (matching clock frequencies on CPU, GPU, HT and RAM) should give a satisfactory result. Don't forget that SW tends to take memory and sometimes, or rather, often, "forgets" to release it, so, if the performance suddenly appears to be "sluggish", that may be caused by too many bytes of RAM being not released back after it's no longer required. I'm still running on 2G of RAM (the new 6G are still in Denmark) and have no problems because I simply restart SW after every really demanding task performed.