Educate me. AutoCad/PS/3D workstation. Traditional card or workstation dedicated?

[Isop]

Say a 9800 series vs. mid range quadro. I don't play much any more, but do a lot of AutoCad, Photoshop and 3D (max, sketchup); and will be doing even more in the future. Looking at just a single card, would it be best to get a traditional card or workstation? Buck up and get both?

I don't even know how specs for workstation cards translate into performance vs. that of a gaming card. I've heard that a lot of the differences are simply driver related.

Any thoughts and/or enlightenment would be great. Thanks, peace.

[iLoki]

The differences are mostly driver related. The drivers for Quadros don't contain any of the optimizations that the GeForce drivers do, so their performance in games isn't as good, but their performance for rendering, CAD, PS, 3D modeling is all better.