Workstation card selection for computer

Workstations are just powerful graphics cards mainly used for high computing tasks such as video editing, 3D modeling, etc. If you are looking for those, knowing about some features will help you select a right card. Before you could make a final decision you could also take a look at below link that tells you a lot about the computer graphics card.

Do you really need it ?

Workstations offer very high computing power. Unless you are into a task where such computing power is a necessity, you do not need to make a workstation computer. They are very expensive. Some card could cost over 5000 dollars.

CHECK HERE: NVIDIA graphics card for workstation

These cards look same as graphics card. Given the cost and usage, video/movie/animation producing companies use such cards in their computers.

Why are they expensive ?

They are expensive for many reasons. GPU card manufacturer generally uses their most power GPU to make workstation cards. These cards also have high speed GDDR specially designed RAM for graphics application. Some of the cards may have multiple GPU chip soldered on-board making the production more expensive than regular graphics card.

Some of these cards have special capability to run computer programming language.

DirectX12, OpenGL and Vulkan

DirectX12 (DX12), OpenGL and Vulkan are three API (Application Programming Interface) used to access a graphics processing unit (GPU). In other words, your computer could use either one of three APIs above to access GPU hardware functionality for video or 3D design rendering. By using hardware, the output (3D rendering) could appear very smooth as if like a movie.

Professional graphics cards use OpenGL as its powerful as well as royalty- free. Vulkan is royalty-free as well. Its newer API with gaining popularity. Just note, your card may not support the latest API, however, card manufacturer will mention the version of API card supports.

Card manufacturer provides software driver that could run under windows 10 and access GPU hardware. DX12 API, mostly used for windows games, is part of Windows 10. It is supported as long as your card has Windows 10 driver.

Limitations of workstation

Even though I have used the word ‘limitations’, in fact, in most cases a common feature is not working simply means ‘its just not supported’. In other words, the manufacturer did not want to add that feature to the workstation.

For example, some graphics card may not play Blu-ray or DVD disk.