nVidia Quadro K600 vs GTX 560

[DesertSweeper]

Hello all!

I have repurposed my home office HP Elite MiniTower 8300 into an editing rig. It already had an i7 so all I did was bump the RAM to 16GB and replace the system drive with a shiny new fast 512GB SSD from Transcend. Added 2x 3TB WD Black Drives for storage. But now the video card...I can afford the PNY K600 with 1GB or stretch the budget a little extra and get a Palit GTX 560 Ti with 2GB RAM for another 50 $

I know this question has been flogged to death between the Quadro and Gaming cards but the new Qudro K series - do they change the playing field?

Which card will give Premiere and PhotoShop the most bang?

Many thanks for any pointers!

[Harm_Millaard · Accepted solution]

No doubt the GTX 560 Ti is way faster, It has double the cores, double the memory bus width and the memory bandwidth is about 4.5 times higher. Even the GTX 550 TI is faster than the Quadro K600, even though it is around 50% less expensive.

[DesertSweeper]

Thanks for the help. It amazes me that one vendor can charge such a relatively high price for a substantially slower card. Is it built THAT much better being a Quadro?

Anyways I trawled the stores this morning and found a Gigabyte GTX660 that is only a few dollars more then the GTX560ti and yes the Gigabyte GTX66oti was a fair bit more expensive. Given that they are almost the same price is the GTX660 a better buy then the GTX560ti ? Is there a magical chart somewhere that shows the horsepower of all these many different models so one doesn't need to bother the good folks on this forum? And can I safely just ignore the crazy price tags on the Quadro's and stick to the gaming cards?

Many thanks again...

[Harm_Millaard]

Quadro's are overpriced and underperforming. It is a protected brand of nVidia and they steal you blind with their A-brand reputation. It is their cash-cow. I have yet to find a Maximus configuration for a whopping $ 6K come even close to a GTX 680 that only costs $ 500. The ONLY reason to choose a Quadro card is when you really NEED 10 bit output to equally exorbitant 10-bit monitors.

You may want to have a look at http://ppbm7.com/index.php/news and scroll down to see a limited comparison of video cards and their performance with PR. If you have the choice between a GTX 560 Ti and a GTX 660, I would go for the 660, because it consumes less power, runs quieter and can steer up to 4 monitors.

[RjL190365]

I agree with Harm: The GTX 660 is the better buy, especially when compared against that GTX 560 Ti that has only 384 CUDA cores and a 256-bit memory bus with only 128 GB/s bandwidth (versus 960 CUDA cores and a memory bandwidth of 144 GB/s for the GTX 660).

And I know exactly what a Quadro K600 is: It is exactly half of a GT 640 (GPU-wise), with only 192 CUDA cores (versus 384 CUDA cores in the GT 640) and the same lousy 128-bit DDR3 memory bus with an equally lousy 28.5 GB/s memory bandwidth.

And here in the States, while there are many different brands of GeForce-based cards on the market, PNY is the only company that NVidia allows to distribute Quadro-based cards.

[DesertSweeper]

Thanks people, am now the proud owner of a GTX660 !!

Appreciate the good and friendly advice.

Regards...

[Harm_Millaard]

Congrats. Good choice and happy editing.