It would be easy to think that one of the reasons a company would want a choppy and lagging workplace graphics card would be so that people were actually working instead of playing games or watching streaming videos. On the other hand, when an engineer is creating 3D renderings for multi-million dollar job proposals, that takes precedent over how detailed a Gnome Princesses dress is. There are a number of differences between graphics cards in the PC world with different variations for basic computing, excessive gaming, and high-end workstation processing. Some of the different graphics cards could inhabit the other’s world but the question needs to be asked – would you want it to? 

What Are Workstation Graphics Cards Designed For?

Workstation graphics cards and sufficient drivers are very important for day to day duties. A large program like AutoDesk Inventor almost needs to have its own dedicated workstation free of any other programs. In software video games, the background and characters are developed by the software engineers and in essence a gamer can’t go beyond the scope of what is available in the game. A mechanical engineer on the other hand might have a 3D model of an automobile engine that they’re working on complete down to the screws and even o-rings. This 3D rendering is twisted and turned in all angles on the computer like a mechanic was holding it in his hand throwing it up and down. A workstation graphics card therefore has to be able to support all the variable data that could be thrown its way.

What Are Gaming Cards Designed For?

Video cards found in gaming PC’s are purchased and developed for the sole purpose of playing games both on a CD and over the Internet. Because people pay good money for an Xbox Live or Gamefire account they want to have an optimum gaming experience. Playing these games on a standard PC will lead to lagging and hardware freeze ups that could be a life or death situation when playing an action role-playing game with your friends. People don’t want to be the reason that a mission failed so they upgrade their video gaming cards…and the new cards make the gameplay easier on the eyes as well. That being said, no company in their right mind would trust even the most advanced gaming card to handle their engineering or 3D rendering tasks.

So Can The Workstation Cards Play Games? 

The answer is of course they can and some actually perform pretty well when called upon. That being said, a quality workstation card used in top architectural studios can run in the $7,000 range and above – quite a hefty price for better Halo 2 graphics. Compare that to the couple hundred dollars a person would spend on a quality gaming video card and the choice is a pretty easy one.

What make the actual cards different aren’t really the materials, size or anything particularly physical. Instead the programming of drivers and the testing and implementation of these brains is where the real price tag originates from. When a computer crashes while playing video, it’s usually something in the drivers and many times for the everyday computer user downloading new drivers can remedy their issues. For million dollar companies though, paying an engineer $95 an hour to wait for his or her to computer boot back up isn’t very smart budgeting.

Companies pay huge money for these heavy-duty workstation drivers because they pay them back. Having a computer crash while showing potential investors a 3D modeling can literally be a million dollar mistake – much more important when compared to leaving your friends high and dry on a Call of Duty mission.

Author Bio: The article is written by Michael Clark. He loves playing online games at his free time and Tom and Jerry Games 365 is his favorite site. Apart he is a freelance writer and guest blogger at many sites.