The NVidia Quadro line has long been a staple of high-end Visual Effects and Designers, but many people still ask “What does a Quadro offer over a GeForce?”  Both are based on the same chipsets, but the Quadro is usually 5x-10x more expensive.  A new press release from NVidia talks specifically about the benefits to AutoCAD users, and gives some concrete numbers:

Designers running AutoCAD 2011 on Quadro professional GPUs can also realize significant performance increases. AutoCAD benchmarks show Quadro delivering:

  • Up to 6x higher performance in ‘3D Hidden’ visual style
  • Up to 3x faster interactive manipulation of models in ‘Conceptual’ visual style
  • Up to 2x gains in speed with the ‘Realistic’ and new ‘Shades of Gray’ visual styles

The main feature of the Quadro line is the various specific application optimizations they’ve integrated into the hardware and the drivers that really don’t impact gamers, but offer significant improvements to features used by designers.  Things like improved antialiasing, improved transparency support, and slightly more accurate computations in the depth field.  Financially, it offers some benefits as well:

“For designers who spend a portion of their day working with AutoCAD, Quadro is a smart, cost-effective investment that increases productivity,” said Jeff Brown, NVIDIA general manager, Professional Solutions Group. “Streamlined workflows can easily save a designer 30 minutes a day, and for a firm with five designers, this translates to a benefit of more than $100,000 over three years.††”

via AutoCAD 2011 Designers Achieve Maximum Productivity with NVIDIA Quadro Certified Graphics.