Icrontic clearly states the case for workstation GPUs vs game GPUs for production studios

This review on Icrontic is a great explanation of why a workstation GPU is needed for serious production work, and how a gaming GPU just doesn’t cut it.

“To understand why it’s beneficial to use a workstation GPU, you first need to understand how they differ from their desktop cousins: It’s all in the presentation. In gaming, many effects and techniques are “cheated.” A desktop card may skip the rendering of certain shaders or textures if they are not critical to the player’s eye, and they may even approximate output in some conditions. This is done because high framerates and performance are preferred when playing a game. Workstation graphics cards use different firmware and drivers which assure that nothing is cheated; rendering operations are complete and thorough. This difference improves rendering quality at the expense of speed. When working in a 3D application, this trade greatly improves productivity and performance.”

The blog post gives the author’s real-world experience using the FirePro V8750 in a production environment.