Hardware-wise, there is NO difference between the commercially available 'gaming' cards and 'professional' cards.
The manufacturers simply lock the hardware on a BIOS or software level so that you as a consumer can't use the gaming card as a professional one (and of course they overcharge you for the 'pro' cards).
The only 'benefit' you see with 'pro' cards is in 3d programs such as AutoCad, LW, 3d Stduio Max, Maya, etc... and even then, the differences are reserved for VIEWPORT previews (not actual rendering that churns out images of scenes - or animations) - or in essence, increased FPS count and higher stability when seeing objects in viewports.
Crashes that occur when using consumer or 'gaming' cards are nothing more than insanely stupid support for those cards on a software level, nothing more.
3d Studio Max started incorporating gpu based rendering in it's later versions, so that final images/animations are done via the GPU AND CPU and not only the CPU.
And for the most part, it can only take advantage of CUDA technology.
AMD has it's own equivalent of CUDA actually which is just as good... but the devs do not use them because Nvidia holds the reigns for the most part when it comes to that 'Nvidia, the way it's MEANT to be played' garbage is one of the examples.