PNY Quadro FX 580 VCQFX580-PCIE-PB 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 Workstation Video Card

Pros: Powered completely by PCI-X slot without need for a six-pin hookup. Very compact. Powerdraft driver for ACAD 2009 absolutely smokes. Standard Quadro drivers for VIZ 2008 are decent too. In benchmarks, the 580 performs very admirably compared to the 1800.

Cons: 512mb of RAM doesn't like a lot these days, but the Quadro FX 1800 doesn't really offer much more (768).

Overall Review: You've got no reason to buy one of these if you aren't building a workstation for Autocad, 3ds Max, or something similar. No gamers here.

Pros: Works well with Solidworks 09 (64), Rhino4 and CS4. Seems faster than my old Quadro 3400. Installation is easy, doesn't need an additional power connection. Newegg's fulfillment was excellent.

Cons: Original card shipped did not work on either display port for a second monitor. After a week PNY's response was to dump it back on Newegg who quickly processed the RMA. Perhaps PNY would have been responsive on an expensive card or perhaps they are overwhelmed with problems. Driver installation screen on the install CD doesn't work but downloading from nvidia worked fine.

Overall Review: Good performance for a lot less money than the older cards. Good luck if you need to get PNY support or an RMA.

Pros: RUNS QUIET AND COOL! I use it for solidworks 2009 with windows 7 and it works without one issue @ all. blows my GTX275 out of the water in solidworks and other rendering programs. It doesn't even require a power connector! So far i have not bogged the beast down.

Cons: NONE @ ALL!

Overall Review: Comes with one DVI port and 2 display ports. DISPLAY PORTS ARE NOT, (*NOT*) HDMI ports. The card comes with one display port--> DVI adapter. If you have HDMI please get a display port===> HDMI adapter sold separately.

Pros: For those who want a workstation card, do not be hesitant to buy this card. This is the top of the entry level line and to get the next level mid range card, you'll have to shell out another $200. I am running CS4 design premium with this card and have no problems with anything. I plan to test Maya and see no troubles ahead.

Cons: DisplayPorts? There are maybe 3 monitors in the world with that connection right now. But it does come with an adapter cable so not a huge deal.

Overall Review: I was thinking of doing an SLI setup with two gaming cards, but it is worth it to get one of these.

Pros: Very pleased with this. Expected nothing but probs, but instead had nothing but instant success. AutoCAD 2010 was painfully slow doing 3DORBIT of wireframe model on Intel Duo 3GHz w/ 8G RAM on Intel DG35EC. Now it's lightning fast, I mean night-and-day difference. Imagine higher / expensive cards would perform same feats with REAL visual style models, but can't afford them yet. Meanwhile FX580 works great for spinning, panning, zooming, whirling wireframe and conceptual models.

Cons: Should come with adapter for VGA. One con is that when using an off-the-shelf VGA adapter, card (obviously) didn't recognize the uberness of my VGA monitor and would _only_ allow 640x480 (!!). This, of course, falls short and should be fixed to allow user to force any resolution no matter what. My "fix" was to changeup my whole video system (removed from KVM switch) and run straight DVI instead of VGA. Not a big deal for me personally, but others should be aware that using this card with VGA will very likely result in max 640x480 resolution via the VGA - in other words, plan to use DVI or DP format instead of VGA.

Pros: I have built 5 machines with this graphics card for students and myself. I run Solidworks, Alias, 3ds Max, etc... It does the job great! One i7 860 OCed to 3.8 ghz, two AMD PhenomII 945s, one AMD PhenomII 955, and a Core 2 Duo machine... they all run very well. All my friends trying to run Solidworks on their laptops or desktops with regular gaming cards struggle when their assemblies get more complex and my machine is still humming along just fine. Building in assembly mode kills them =p

Cons: Sometimes it seems that when switching from other programs back to Solidworks when I'm multitasking it takes a second or two for the card to kick back in as the assemblies will move real slow. After a couple seconds it will catch up and move smooth again. This on my i7 machine running xp 64 bit. I'm thinking it might have something to do with compatibility between SW09, XP, and the card, but its not a huge deal.

Overall Review: For the price you can't beat it! Eventually I am going to step up to the Quadro 1800 just to get that extra boost in performance, but for my uses now, it works just fine.

Pros: Outstanding card. Fast as hell. Have an FX1700 in one machine and this card in my newest machine and the $180 FX580 is quicker. Much quicker. I do CFD/FEA with very big models and the card is great. I'm running Ubuntu and it booted with working graphics off my old partition (which had an ATI driver running!) The Nvidia driver installs through the repositories perfectly, and after that the card screams! Nividia's linux support is excellent. Couldn't have had a better experience with it. I am sure its an easy process with windows, too. Card is quite small, so it will fit in almost anything, and at 40W it runs cool. Draws basically no power.

Cons: Fan is a bit loud for a 40W load but not as loud as my CPU heatsink so not really a concern. Once the case is closed you'd never really notice it unless its DEAD silent in the room.

Overall Review: I personally like the HDMI connections but some people may not. Have yet to do any gaming or HDCP content yet.

Pros: Card is cool and quiet and its OpenGL 3.0 provides some assistance for my video editing and graphic design. No problem with the DisplayPort as described by others.

Cons: None so far.

Overall Review: I'm wildly enthusiastic about this card because of the CUSTOMER SUPPORT. When I called the TOLL FREE number included in the card literature, the phone was answered by a PERSON. This person was the actual tech support guy so there was NO TRANSFERS or HOLDS. English was his FIRST LANGUAGE so there was no communication problems. He was COURTEOUS and FRIENDLY and helped resolve my problem in just a couple of minutes (problem was an operator error). Can't remember the last time I got this sort of service. Thanks PNY!