Hey everyone. So my dilemna is this, I am trying to decide on a good mid range priced workstation graphics card for wireframe and 3d CAD(autocad, revit, solidworks, etc). I am currently in college but I will also be doing some drafting work on the side. I was going to buy a Quadro 2000 because I have been loyal to Nvidia for many years and seemingly they rule the workstation market with superior drivers and the widest gamut of supported applications. BUT I am now reading claims that for about the same price I can get better performance out of a AMD FirePro v5900.

So I see that the numbers hold true and it has anywhere from slightly to substantially better performance in enchmarks. But how does it hold up in the real world? Driver issues? Good applications not supported?

Also, my mind is a little blown on another issue. When I started looking into the AMD cards I found that I could get a used v7800 for only slightly more then a v5900. Now I understand that new generations improve efficiency but this just doesn't add up. The v7800 has almost triple the stream processors, 100mhz faster GPU clock, double the memory clock so double the bandwidth, and it does about triple the teraflops.......YET in the benchmarks the v5900 blows it out of the water....?!?!?! help please

Thanks,

Fred