For a long time now, 3D graphics cards have been split into 2 categories - cards for professional applications like 3D Studio MAX and cards designed for 3D games in mind. Just what are the differences between the two categories of cards, one may wonder.

Well, 3D gaming cards have basically one goal in mind - the rendering of the 3D environment as fast as possible. Thus, the fillrate of the card is very important. Professional 3D cards, however, do not need the high fillrate that gaming cards need. They rely more on the polygon throughput instead. Still, many gaming cards like the RIVA TNT2 already have polygon throughputs as high as 9 million polygons / sec.

The clincher however is that the 9 million polygons / sec. polygon throughput that the RIVA TNT2 is so proud of is only its peak throughput. Its sustained throughput, in reality, is much lower. On the other hand, professional 3D cards have very high sustained polygon throughputs. That's because professional applications like 3D Studio MAX rely heavily on polygon throughput. Because gaming cards have low sustained polygon throughput, they make very poor professional 3D cards.

Also, rendering quality isn't quite so important in gaming cards while it is a make-or-break property in a professional card. Gaming cards often trade display precision for framerates. That's because in games, the action is usually so fast and furious that the player won't notice a few missing pixels here and there. Neither will the engrossed player notice minor visual artifacts like improperly antialiased lines, dropped polygons, etc... Even if they can be discerned from screenshots, the player won't really be concerned because it's very unlikely he/she would notice such defects while trying to avoid getting fragged. :)

But such display defects would most certainly give the professional user's eyes a massive traumatic blow! Visual precision is extremely important to the professional user. If pixels are always missing or lines are not drawn the way they should be, the user would be forced to constantly check and recheck his work to ensure that what he/she gets is really not what he/she sees! Just imagine the incredible amount of time and effort wasted on such an endeavor. Such a card could very well be considered as a decelerator instead of an accelerator card! That's why games often run slower on professional cards. It's not just a matter of fillrate and polygon throughput - the gaming performance of a 3D card also depends on the quality of its rendering.  

Let's check out what is meant by visual precision. Below are four pictures, courtesy of 3Dlabs.

As you can see above in the Lightscape Viewer test, a professional 3D card showed perfect rendering while there's many evidence of dropped pixels in the picture rendered by a gaming card.

Below are examples of antialiased lines produced by a professional 3D card and the a gaming card. As you can see, the professional 3D card produced clean antialiased lines while there are many knots in the rendered lines and uneven line distribution in the picture produced by the gaming card. Some lines aren't even antialiased!