- Sep 9, 2009
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I have to select a graphics card to go in a workstation for my office (the rest of the system already exists: it's a Q9550 with 4GB of DDR2, 1TB Caviar Black, etc). The programs used will be Maya, Blender, and AutoCAD, in addition to ImageJ, Matlab, MS office, etc.
The budget is $200-300 (if going above $200 is worth the cost).
I don't really know anything about workstation graphics cards. Should I be considering those over regular desktop/gaming ones? The desktop graphics cards seem to give you a lot more muscle for your money (just looking at the cooling solutions, anyway), but maybe the programs listed above would benefit more from a workstation card in the $200-300 range.
If a regular desktop graphics card is the way to go, is there any reason to go with NVidia or ATI specifically? ATI seems to have the edge lately in power/watt, and a cooler HD 5xxx would make me more comfortable than a very hot-running Fermi card.
Thanks for any help!
The budget is $200-300 (if going above $200 is worth the cost).
I don't really know anything about workstation graphics cards. Should I be considering those over regular desktop/gaming ones? The desktop graphics cards seem to give you a lot more muscle for your money (just looking at the cooling solutions, anyway), but maybe the programs listed above would benefit more from a workstation card in the $200-300 range.
If a regular desktop graphics card is the way to go, is there any reason to go with NVidia or ATI specifically? ATI seems to have the edge lately in power/watt, and a cooler HD 5xxx would make me more comfortable than a very hot-running Fermi card.
Thanks for any help!