ATI FireGL V8650 versus NVIDIA QuadroFX 5600

Despite the fact that workstation cards are useless to us gamers, it doesn’t even matter. The way we admire these cards can be compared to how we’d admire a fancy exotic car, with jaw dropped and wallets sobbing. Believe it or not though, some people actually need such cards, including CAD designers, 3D modelers, science labs, game developers, people with low self-esteem… the list goes on.

HotHardware has taken the top cards from both sides of the fence, ATI’s FireGL V8650 and NVIDIA’s QuadroFX 5600, and did what anyone should do if equipped with both… find out which is better! Sadly, there is no solid conclusion even after all of the tests, but ATI’s 2GB card really does excel where huge memory is needed, although NVIDIA’s card proved to be a better overall offering… and it’s a few hundred dollars cheaper in the process.

Source: HotHardware

The V8650 is a monster version of ATI’s R600 graphics processor with 2GB of frame buffer memory attached. The Quadro FX 5600 is the 1.5GB heavyweight workstation cousin of the GeForce 8800 Ultra, both of which use NVIDIA’s powerful G80 processor. Both cards are phenomenally large, as well. As you can see above, this is going to be interesting.

Source: HotHardware