is $900 U.S. too much for a graphics card?

[lies]

I think so.  This guy uses Solidworks, a 3D engineering software, so he needed a graphics card.  The salesman told him he needs a high end graphics card in order to get the lag from the animation to flow better.  He bought it!  He got ripped.  Why would anybody pay over $900?  What the best top of the line graphics card that most use right now? I doubt Solidworks needs it more then the best game out now.

[Arbys_Oven_Mitt]

sad that pat isnt here anymore lol...
maybe u could go post in his Pat's tech support section on CFC website, Right Here
http://www.cfcclan.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewforum&f=25

[Target]

No I don't think so if he takes his work seriously.  When you work over eight hours a day behind a computer and you are zooming, scrolling, panning, rendering, viewing and rotating in 3D mode, continuous lag gets real old.  It could theoretically waste a portion of your day, staying at work eight hours, but only getting six hours of work done is very frustrating!!  Time is money!!  I just got a new card with an updated GPU and a gig of memory and I still have difficulty and I am not even dealing with solids.  I did take my map I am building, which is over a hundred square miles to a guy that has a quatro 350 or 450 and he had no trouble what so ever.  I believe those cards are $800 to $900!!

If he were just gaming I would have to say yes, it would be overkill, but if he is using it for work, rendering solids and 3D geometry, then no.  In addition to that, the cost of the card is insignificant to what he will make on the project.

[Patriot]

It highly depends on What gfx card was sold him...

now as far as in general... no if the application can use the gfx power... then by all means get the uber rendering gfx card...

MY desktop chips ati 4850 and 4870 have 1Tflop and 1.2 Tflops of single precision compute power... Ati makes workstation versions of those and sells them for a lot more... but offers better driver support and focuses on tuning them for non-realtime work loads...

basically the drivers that are tuned for gaming.... hurts non-game rendering and vice a versa.

The problem with generalization is... well.... this.....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=Property&N=2010380449&PropertyCodeValue=5739%3A38094%2C5739%3A38095&page=1&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=False


both ati and nvidia have workstation counterparts for just about every desktop chip....
so if your friend got one of those on the first page for $900 boy did he get ripped...
if he got something off the last page.... (highest is ~$3k)  then no....

[Patriot]

sad that pat isnt here anymore lol...
maybe u could go post in his Pat's tech support section on CFC website, Right Here
http://www.cfcclan.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewforum&f=25

thanks for thinking of me... i do still have the mff unread link in my quick links.... I check both cfc and mff daily.

Obi made me laugh when he named the tech support that...  I asked if I could have a tech support area to hang out in and he made that lol...

 Pat's tech help SUPERSTORE
Computer idget talk to computer widget

[lord Obidiah]

obi is cool