Graphics cards for servers?

[Upendra09]

Hello all,

I was on Nvidia's site and I saw all these other graphics cards,

There were quadros, teslas, nforce, cuda, and geforce

I know geforces( obviously) but what r those other ones? what are they for?

and does ATI have similar ones?


Thanks

 

[AKM880]

The Quadros and Teslas are for work stations and really graphic intense settings. Not for gaming though. One Tesla had 4GB of onboard mem. For ATI I think their offerings are the FireMV and FireGL workstation graphics.

 

[jitpublisher]

They are graphic cards, and complete workstation/server solutions for professionals.
If you were on the site, why didn't you read about them there? They tell you exactly what each is, and exactly what it is for....dooh.......
And yes, ATI has similar.

 

[Upendra09]

Why would u need 4 gigs of VRAM? and why can't they be used for gaming?

 

[ShadowFlash]

Why would u need 4 gigs of VRAM? and why can't they be used for gaming?

The extra RAM comes in handy for manipulating large complex solid models and assemblies in the CAD/CAM world. There are other uses in other fields as well.

Why no gaming ? Simple answer: Drivers tune the hardware for precise rendering as opposed to fast gaming, accuracy being more important than speed in the professional world..... More comlplete Answer : Read any of the recent workstation card reviews and comments here at Tom's.

Workstation Graphics cards also usually lag a generation behind on hardware, providing a more stable platform with better developed drivers.

 

[Shadow703793]

^Well said! Also if OP needs a GPU for just running the basic GUI for a server, any cheap GPU such as 8400GS/3450 would work fine.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Just FYI, the TESLA models are not for Video or 3D, they are compute engine models meant to do large number crunching, and memory is vital to that, more vital than even large data sets for 2D and 3D which benefit more from compression.

The ATi Equivalents are;

Quadro = FireGL, FirePro and FireMV (there are sub models for Quadro like the NVS and they match up depending on features. They are 2D/3D/Multi-monitor cards.

Tesla = FireStream : they are GPGPU cards meant primarily to be used a co-processors or massively parrallel clusters.

Geforce = Radeon : these are the gaming lines

nforce is a motherboard chipset and driver package

Cuda is a programming platform for making the GPUs run non-graphical code, the ATi equivalents are CAL & Brook+ with CTM being a little more difficult and to the baseline where you essentially just code for the features/options not translate. OpenCL and DX11's compute shader support will also take part in this area soon and take some of their business as well as open up more to smaller players like S3.

 

[Upendra09]

Thanks guys