I'm going to build a computer to be used mainly for CAD design. However, I'd like to be able to run MS FSX Deluxe and other games on it as well.Will MS FSX run on NVidea QuadroFX series or ATI FireGL series workstation graphics cards?

I have a PC with Dual Quadro FX4500 and it runs FSX pretty well but not as well as with GeForce 7950GX2 or 8800GTX. For the cost of the cards the gaming experience is poor. However the Quadro FX4500 cards will drive 4 large monitors (each 1600x1200) in Visual Studio really well. The Quadro FX is not optimized for game play..but its pretty good.RegardsJimPS: The Quadro FX beats the ATI FireGL by miles for 3D graphics rendering

Hi Jim,Thanks very much for your reply. I suspected the FX and FireGL cards for CAD applications aren't (as you say) 'optimized' for game play. Just seems odd that a card that can do such fine detail and speed at rendering doesn't do games as well. I guess the technology (programming?) for CAD 3D rendering is different than that used for games. Can you tell me how game play suffers with these cards... Frame rate... detail... other things? I'm curious.Have a great day!Gary

Gary,The main hit is in Frame Rates. Detail, colour and Anti-aliasing are all good (as you'd expect with a CAD card) but you can't get the fps you can get with the Geforce 7&8 cards. Typically settings which give 30fps running 4 monitors on the 7950GX2 will drop to less than 20 on the Dual FX4500.RegardsJim

Hmmmm.... that's very interesting, and a shame. Thanks very much for the info Jim.Gary

I can't do an objective comparative test because I've can't install FSX on the CAD PC now because of the Activation issue. However I did have it on that PC a couple of months ago (before I got the PC with the 8800GTXs) and it struggled to get over 20fps...but I did have most things on Med-High. How many monitors do you intend to run?? Also, if you tweak the settings (eg turn down the Autogen, Water FX, Clouds etc..I'm sure you'll be able to get over 24fps...which will be quite acceptable)RegardsJim

Well... my brother says that flying Flight Sim is like having your head glued to the cockpit ceiling. heheheh So... I thought I'd surround myself with about 12 monitors so I'd really get the full 'feel' of flying, and be able to work on 12 different views of the same drawing at once!! LOL Just Joking... I WISH!!!Seriously... At this point I don't plan on using more than one monitor or two. Soooo... the FX card might be fine with that.Presently I'm running an nVidea geforce 6300 TurboGTX (256mb) on an AMD Athlon 2400 with 1gb ram on which I'm running FSX and TurboCad 9. Both apps run OK on this system if I keep the FSX settings medium, and the drawings I work on aren't too large, detailed, or need to be highly rendered. However, when I build my new system I want to get as much performance as I can for my bucks. (Of course!)Oh the other side of the coin... How well do gaming cards run CAD and 3d design applications? If they do those apps ok... I may just go with a gaming card. I wish Tom's Hardware Guide, or somebody like them would do the comparative test you mention. However, THG only tests the CAD cards against the CAD cards, and the gaming cards the same. Hence my question to this forum. Hmmmm... I think I'll post the same question to the THG forum. I'd pose the same question to the manufacturers, but I'd rather have independant information.Have a great day!Gary

The GeForce cards are considerably cheaper than the Quadro FX cards.A Quadro FX 4500 will set you back $1600 and a 5500 a cool $2400even though it only has 8 pixel pipelinesWhereas a GeForce 8800GTX is less than $600 and has 128 stream processors (which is equivalent to more than 32 pixel pipelies).So if you got 2 x 8800GTX in SLI mode it would still be cheaper.You could then operate them in SLI mode for CAD work and for FS you could hook up 4 x TripleHead2Go and drive your 12 monitors!!!RegardsJim