Quaddro FX 3700 = 8800GT?

[Babrbarossa]

Below are the specs for the "new" quaddro FX 3700. I ahve no experience or knowledge of these professional, specialized GPUs, so I don't know how they differ from their gaming counterparts, if at all. Can anyone enlighten me? Seems like a way to milk extra money from architecture firms

NVIDIA Quadro FX - High-End Products



NVIDIA Quadro® high-end graphics solutions are the industry-leading workstation graphics solutions for CAD, DCC and visualization applications. Featuring outstanding performance and quality, NVIDIA Quadro high-end products deliver up to 512MB frame buffer memory, up to 51.2GB/sec. memory bandwidth, 256-bit memory interface and support for ultra high-resolution panels up to 2560x1600 for ultimate productivity. Offering a new level of interactivity for engineers and designers, NVIDIA Quadro high-end graphics solutions enable shorter production cycles and faster time-to-market.
Introducing the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700 graphics board, best-of-class solution for CAD, DCC, and visualization professionals, offers new levels of performance and interactivity, enabling shorter production cycles, and faster time to market.

Available solutions: NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700 and NVIDIA Quadro FX 3500

NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700//NVIDIA Quadro FX 3500
Memory Size: 512MB//256MB
Memory Interface: 256-bit//256-bit
Graphics Memory Bandwidth: 51.2GB/sec.//42.2GB/sec.
Graphics Bus: PCI Express x16//PCI Express

Ground-breaking NVIDIA® unified architecture
Efficiently delivers up to 2x the application performance.
Available only on the Quadro FX 3700
The reference standard for Shader Model 4.0 and next generation operating systems
Enabling breakthrough ultra-realistic, real-time visualization applications.
Available only on the Quadro FX 3700
GPU Computing
NVIDIA CUDA provides a C language environment and tool suite in combination with high performance visualization unleashes new capabilities to solve highly complex challenges such as real-time ray tracing and interactive volume rendering.
Available only on the Quadro FX 3700
Flexible platform to deliver CAD, DCC, and visualization professionals best-of-class solutions
Featuring NVIDIA® SLI™ technology for NVIDIA Quadro graphics boards is a revolutionary platform innovation that enables professional users to dynamically scale graphics performance, enhance image quality, and expand display real estate.
PCI Express 2.0 Compliant
Doubles the data transfer rate up to 5 GT/sec per lane for an aggregate bandwidth of 16 GB/sec bi-directional (8 GB/sec in each direction).
Available only on the Quadro FX 3700

[SKYMTL]

Quadro products are for OpenGL applications and specialize in those areas. This particular one has basically the same core and PCB configuration as an 8800GT (both 512MB and 256MB versions) but has a completely different BIOS. These cards usually can't handle DirectX applications very well since they and their driver packages are geared towards OpenGL. Then again you wouldn't want to buy one of these to play a game with since pricing starts around $600-$700 for the 256MB version.

[Babrbarossa]

Wow- quite a premium for a different bios. I guess when the development costs are the same, but must be divided among 1/1000th of the number of buyers, that's what happens.