Quadro 5000 and Geforce

Question

hi everyone, I'm basicly using maya, nuke and sometimes adobe programs. my pc is 3 years old second gen i7, it's still good but I'm about to get a heavy project and it's time to get a new one for me.
1- I need to learn if I can use geforce and quadro (sli or separate) cards on my desktop pc.
drivers and programs will run okay?
2- I'm about to get 3770k cpu and quadro 5000, but I can't decide what is best motherboard to use on this rig.
regards,

Answer 1

Here's how GPU performance can slow down on an LGA 1155 platform: The CPU itself has only 16 available PCI-e lanes. Normally, all 16 of those lanes are fed to the GPU that's sitting in the primary PCI-e x16 slot. But on most LGA 1155 motherboards, if you add a second GPU, then the bandwidth of the primary PCI-e x16 slot will drop to only x8 bandwidth because the secondary PCI-e x16 slot would then steal eight of those PCI-e lanes from the primary x16 slot. (There are a few LGA 1155 motherboards that maintain x16 bandwidth in the primary x16 slot even with a second GPU installed - but that is because the "secondary" x16-length slot is actually only an x4 slot, run off of the P67/Z68/Z77 PCH in PCI-e 2.0 x4 mode, instead of directly off of the CPU.) (By the way, LGA 1155 CPUs have 20 total PCI-e lanes - but four of those are actually fed to the P67/Z68/Z77 PCH, making only 16 lanes available for GPUs.)
And we've been advising against the Quadro 5000 because it is now two generations old, and as such outdated. In fact, it dates all the way back to 2010 when the first-generation hexacore i7, the i7-980X, was brand new (Sandy Bridge was not yet on the market back then). As a GPU, it is no faster than an old GeForce GTX 465 that it's based on because although both GPUs have 352 CUDA cores, the Quadro 5000's low actual clock speed of 513MHz (compared to the 607 MHz of the GTX 465) completely offsets the Quadro 5000's higher memory bandwidth of 120 GB/s (versus 102.6 GB/s on the GTX 465). Yet it still costs more than $1,500 new, even today. That's extremely severely overpriced for a GPU that's only going to be used in a secondary capacity, with the GPU going almost completely unutilized most of the time.
Finally, there is the issue of driver compatibility: GeForce drivers generally do not work with Quadros, nor do Quadro drivers work with GeForces. And there is a good chance that the two drivers will conflict with one another, seriously affecting stability and performance. That is more likely to occur if the GeForce and Quadro cards are of two completely different GPU generations (for example, that Quadro 5000 that you're considering may clash with the GeForce 600-series GPU that's being used as primary). So, to minimize the risk of such conflicts, only consider a K-series Quadro if you need 10-bit output for a system that normally uses a GeForce GTX 600-series GPU. (This means that as a secondary output GPU for 10-bit monitors, a $400 Quadro K2000 or even a $200 Quadro K600 would suffice as a secondary output card.)
And no, the LGA 2011 platform with its i7-39xx CPU is not a first-generation i7. It is actually considered a second-generation i7 (like the i7-3770K's predecessor, the i7-2600K/2700K).
Message was edited by: RjL190365