Workstation vs Consumer graphics cards for computer aided design (CAD) and digital content creation (DCC) There are many who believe that it is not necessary to spend the extra money on workstation graphics cards for CAD or DCC, but there are specific differences in how Workstation and Consumer Graphics cards function. These points are extracted from nVidia’s Quadro vs GeForce document. Antialiased Point and Lines Many workstation applications, particularly in the CAD market, offer the option of using antialiased points and lines (sometimes called “wireframe”). With this option turned on, component edges can be viewed as precisely as possible without encountering the aliasing artifacts that are associated with lines displayed on a rasterized display. Workstation graphics cards use Hardware Antialiased Lines as against to Consumer graphics cards that use Software Antialiased Lines. Logic Operations Logic operations are often used by workstation applications in mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD) and digital content creation (DCC) markets. They’re used to draw on top of a 3D scene to make specific features visible without significantly changing or complicating the existing drawing functions or adversely affecting performance. This can be demonstrated in DCC applications where the XOR logic operation is used to draw sophisticated cursors, such as those in the paint operation of Alias’ Maya application. The XOR logic operation draws the cursor on top of the 3D scene for applications that do not support overplay planes. If the XOR logic operation is enabled, the performance drop of the Workstation Card is minimal when compared to that of a Consumer Card. In professional applications where logic operations are used, this equates to significant improvement in performance—a definite productivity benefit. Clip Regions During a typical workflow, workstation applications pop up many windows for menus or alternative views of components or scenes. Unlike consumer applications such as games, these applications often occupy the full screen, so the result is many overlapping windows. Depending on how they are handled by the graphics hardware, overlapping windows may noticeably affect visual quality and graphics performance. Workstation cards manage the transfer of data between a window and the overall frame buffer by clip regions. When a window has no overlapping windows, the entire contents of the color buffer can be transferred to the frame buffer in a single, continuous rectangular region. However, if other windows overlap the window, the transfer of data from the color buffer to the frame buffer must be broken into a series of smaller, discontinuous rectangular regions. These rectangular regions are referred to as “clip regions.” To provide the best overall graphics performance, the transfer of data using clip regions is hardware-accelerated. It’s not possible to support all hardware-accelerated clip regions, however, so when the overlapping windows require more clip regions than are accelerated by hardware, a default software path is used. As expected, when a software path is used for clip regions, the speed of the transfer between the color buffer and frame buffer is affected and this in turn affects overall graphics performance. Most consumer applications and games don’t create many pop-up windows, so Consumer cards support only one clip region, whereas Workstation cards support up to eight clip regions. Hardware accelerated Clip Planes In many situations, understanding the relationship between components in a complex 3D can be eased by using clip planes. Clip planes allow sections of the geometry to be cut away so the user can look inside solid objects. Looking inside objects is particularly useful for visualizing assemblies that comprise hundreds or thousands of components. For this reason, professional CAD applications, including Pro/ENGINEER, often let users define clip planes. Workstation cards support clip-plane acceleration in hardware—a significant performance improvement when it is used in professional applications. For more information or recommendations on suitable workstation products please visit our website at www.jaton.com.au