I've been using Quadro cards for several years now and it's only been recently that I've seen feedback about the possibility that they're the same hardware as the much cheaper GeForce cards (I took this with a grain of salt, but needed some outside opinions.) The difference in cost warranted at least one stab at getting to the underlying truth (if there was one.) Frankly, it's a bit hard to believe that Nvidia would be working a scam and not get caught (or really, just working a scam.)
My need is definitely for work, not gaming, and I've always managed to find the limit of my hardware very quickly and easily. It would be nice to not get to the limit so easily for once. I'm considering going full-bore and shelling out for the FX5800. Yikes!
By the way, I work on very large Architectural and Construction projects - airport terminals, hospitals and similar, using Revit, NavisWorks and CS5. 3D models range up to 1GB in size and the graphics files are often over 4GB.
Among the puzzles are that the GeForce cards seem to have more processing cores than the Quadros, but I wonder if this is comparing apples to oranges, and besides I'm sure there are more significant factors that separate the two product lines.
Any further clarity on the real differences would be very welcome.
Thanks!