Giovanni Azua wrote:

I have been comparing the two ATI series also the
equivalent NVidia and can not figure out what are
the major differences between the Workstation
and Gaming series?

It's simple. The workstation cards offer certified drivers (which You need
if You want support from Your vendor of Your CAD software), several features
needed in the professional market (i.e. antialiased lines, multipipe output
with PCIe cards, etc), a very good analog signal quality (to avoid blurry
pictures on a big crt), and a very hig price...

From a technical point of view the FireGL and Quadro cards are almost
identical to the Radeon and Geforce models...

One main difference is obvious: price tag

I have a DELL Worstation 670

a Dell Precision 670...

with 64-bit extensions
and PCI-Express graphic port and would like to upgrade
it with the most powerful and reasonably priced Graphic
Card but I am affraid of selecting the cheaper Gaming
models serie and then realizing it would not perform
as well as the Workstation model ...

My needs?

- Software Development

no advantage with a professional gfx card

- Database Development

no advantage with a professional gfx card

- Gaming :-) Half-Life 2/Counter-Strike/AOM/etc

no advantage with a professional gfx card (but no disadvantage, either)

- No CAD applications

so You don't use anything that would benefit from the additional features of
a professional gfx card...

- Support for different OS(s): XP, Linux, Unix, Solaris 4 Intel.

If You say Linux You want Nvidia. ATIs Linux drivers suck really badly...

My Workstation shipped bundled with an ATI Fire V3100 I
did not want to ask DELL for a different one because they
would most likely overprice it, I decided to get the cheapest
bundled from DELL and upgrade later on.

Right decision...

I bought a similar machine (HP xw8200 Dual XEON 3GHz EM64T w. PCIe) but
without gfx card. My previous workstations always had professional gfx cards
like the QuadroFX2000 and ATI FireGL X1-256p. They worked also very well for
gaming, but this time I bought a cheap PNY Verto Geforce6600GT card since at
the moment I saw no reason to spend that much money for a professional gfx
card. What should I say, the card also works perfectly with my CAD
applications, and it's fast enough even for the latest games. It has 2x DVI
outputs, has 3 years warranty, and also provides an excellent analog signal.

Of course a GF6800Ultra would be faster, but not that much faster than what
it is more expensive. IMHO the most attractive cards at the moment are the
GF6600GTs. And in the end it's better to buy a 6600GT now and a new card in
say two years than spending now the money for a 6800U and having to spend
money again in 3 years because the card gets too slow...

Benjamin