FWIW I have 2 machines running the GeForce 8600GT's w/512mb and have never had a problem with them.
Michael, I don't have links to back this up, but last summer I was looking for a better card for a Vista system, the GeForce blew the doors off of much more expensive Quadro's. This was due to the GeForce's being optimized for DirectX10, where the Quadro's were optimized for OpenGL.
I saw those benchmarks, however a few of the quadro based cards are optimized for Directx10.
I had this conversation with another user building a system and sent a couple other benchmarks to him, and the Quadro cards were still at or near top of the heap. Remember that all benchmark test can be skewed, the overall performance on the Quadro cards was, is better than similar WORKSTATION graphics cards; because that is what they were tested against, not game cards.
They might be working fine for you, however I have seen them with the wrong drivers NOT even display all of the text in dialog boxes, and other interesting issues.
Let's try this;
What do we do at the office (WORK)
What are we payed to do at the office(WORK)
Why is it called a JOB (because we are working)
So if you want to put a card in your WORKSTATION that is designed for playing games, go ahead.
In the end you will pay for your decision.
If I were your network administrator (asset manager) you would NOT be sitting in front of 'the cheapest' box money can buy. You would be sitting in front of a Workstation, with dual hard drives, massive ram, etc. We the company will save money with fewer crashes, and the need to replace said hardware on a 6 year cycle.
I can say this because, the machine I built 6 years ago is STILL running and with ZERO upgrades even as autodesk ramped up the minimum system requirements.
I might pay more the day I buy the machine. However I will pay less in the long run by needing to replace or upgrade that other box, and have fewer crashes in the long run. And I as the systems administrator would spend less time trying to troubleshoot the cad users issues with this hardware.
You can do what you want, but how many cad stations have you replaced in 6 years?
