Geforce titan or quadro k4000?

Question

Hello all -
I'm hoping to get a little help/clarification on which card would better suit my needs, and appreciate any/all help. I'm probably at an intermediate level of understanding when it comes to the technical aspects of computers, so some of the finer points escape me.
In short, i'm looking at two graphics cards to purchase as an upgrade: the geforce titan http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-titan/specifications or the quadro k4000 http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-desktop-gpus.html  .
Currently, my setup is as follows:
Intel Motherboard Dual Socket Xeon S5520SC
Intel Xeon CPU Fan Heatsink STS100C
2 x 2.26GHz Intel "Nehalem" Xeon Quad Core [8MB]
12GB 1333MHz DDR3 Triple Channel SDRAM (6 x 2GB)
1TB High Speed Hard Drive [64MB Cache, 7200RPM]
StormDrive Dual Layer CD/DVD Writer
850W Silent Power Supply
Windows 7 Pro [64-bit]
NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800 Workstation Graphics Accelerator [1GB]
PCI 3 Port FireWire [TI Chipset]
(additional) 1TB High Performance Drive [64MB Cache SATA 3 6GB]
I use my workstation for projects and not gaming. And i used CS5 and Toon Boon Harmony as my two mediums for editing/creation. With CS5, it's my understanding that the quadro cards are preferred as they utilize some useful functions (such as mercury playback), and that they handle after effects better for the 3d issues. Conversely, Toon Boom Harmony suggests a geforce card over a quadro, as it corresponds with their software more "inherently" than a quadro. Granted, both programs would work well with either type of card, but is there one that is better fit to run both? And given my setup listed above, would the Titan card be massive overkill/be bottlenecked by slower components? Additionally, can anyone testify to a head to head matchup between these two cards?
Thanks.

Answer 1

I listed observations and testing results. The editing applications that have GPU acceleration and perform better with Geforce cards are professional applications used in all the media content creation industry. Davinci and Adobe are far more prevalent now than what few applications that benefit from the Quadro Open GL plugins. GPU acceleration in general has supplanted Open GL as the primary GPU processing. Since it has, the raw specs of the cards decide the performance. This has been tested and shown with results by far more people than myself. So these are not opinions. The 700 series cards are showing greater performance than the previous gen Nvidia cards so obviously the cards were not limited that much if at all. The applications caching models are currently limiting the performance of the current cards as are the CPU's available. The CPU's themselves have to decode the data first that get's GPU processed and create all of the buffers that transit the data down to the GPU for processing. That is where the current limitation is for the GPU processing load. GPU-Z is reflecting this when monitoring the GPU load during application processing. Only certain codecs with resolutions greater than 2K such as red are using enough frame data to really push the cards. This points to applications limiting performance and not the hardware. There are far more applications now using GPU acceleration that gain the benefit from the specs of the cards than there are applications that take advantage of the Quadro Open GL plugins
Nothing you have mentioned supports any professional stability argument for the Quadro cards. I actually listed a current problem with the Quadro cards that effects any processing unit and that is heat. That has been observed in testing and long term support here with failed video cards. The Quadro k4000 series due to the single slot profile, limited cooling, and poor fan control has the highest failure rate. Those cards are averaging well over 80+C with GPU acceleration applications especially since they are using lower end GPU chips that are often at 75% load or greater. Time, experience, and results show the higher end Geforce cards have a higher stability probability due to heat generation and constant long term load percentage. The only reason scientific, medical, and engineering GPU acceleration applications are used with the Quadro cards is the ECC ram option. When processing data sets that take weeks to complete or have extremely high cost involved in research, errors due to GPU ram is not something those R&D entities want to risk. In those scenarios the Quadro cards are the best choice. That is the only stability based advantage the Quadro cards bring to the table. That however no real impact on media content creation which we are discussing in this forum.
Results and observations don't require a resume of experience to validate. Simply perform the testing as other have done like myself and list them here. I am stating results and observations that have been reported by many others so the validation is the simply the number of results that reflect the same data. If you disagree then report your results and let others either duplicate or disprove. That is not blind faith but simply data. Listing a bunch of marketing material as facts does nothing to validate your argument and are not facts as you state. They are marketing points that can be interpreted any number of ways hence the lack of any real value to the actual editors or content industry in general.