No, I haven’t forgotten about this blog.I was just too busy, sorry for the lack of updates. I’ll start again by answering two questions:

What is the difference between a Geforce and a Quadro?

 Essentially, both of them is the same. for example, Quadro fx 4600 is somewhat equal to a Geforce 8800gtx. The price difference, though is between night and day. Quadro cards are labeled as ‘professional card’ by nvidia, they can accelerate performance in CAD applications and digital content creations (or so they said). But I have never tried any of them, so I can’t tell the difference.

Geforce cards, on the other hand, are usually described as gaming card. This is true and should hold true for sometime in the future. But now that Nvidia has this CUDA thing up and running (which also tickles my interest), a Geforce card can serve you more than just gaming goodness. They can be used as a physics accelerator for games, folding@home, and even video encoding device. There isn’t much use to them yet, but I ‘m pretty sure this technology will keep developing.

So if you only need to play games, get a Geforce card or two. If you are into CAD or other applications that can use the extra Quadro features, and you don’t mind paing for it, get one. 

If you are interested, there was a way to softmod a Geforce card into a Quadro, though it is not possible to do it on newer cards. Read more here. More info about these cards here (pdf download).

What is the best card in the IDR 400.000 price range?

This question is tough to answer, especially since dollar exchange value has just risen from around IDR 9.200 to around IDR 10.500. But if you want to know, I still recommend the radeon X1650pro. It is a very solid card for its price range, and it should let you play any game you want, though you will need to tone down the settings.