Maybe for WinNT-based early OpenGL ICD curiosity, but that would just be the usual Quake games and its derivatives.

Though I do wonder if workstation equivalents of today's DX11 hardware suffer the same depth inprecision issues....

ATi FireGL and Quadro will have no problems - they'll perform similarly or slightly worse than their Radeon/GeForce counterparts (if one exists) in gaming, and all of their "extra features" will likely be of no consequence for gamer/consumer use (really, do you need SDI? or genlock? or 3-pin stereo?). The only stand-out on the feature-front is that generally pro cards arrived at very high resolution digital connections earlier than consumer gear - for example Quadro FX 2000 and 3000 have DL DVI (and I think they're among the only native universal AGP cards with DL DVI). Quadro cards of appropriate era to support CUDA/PhysX will do so. Newer FireGL (new enough not to be called FireGL) will support Eyefinity as well. SLI for nVidia is locked out unless you have a "Certified Platform" (OEM machine off a very short list) - I can tell you, however, that Quadro FX + GeForce will happily co-exist in the same system. CrossFire Pro is supposed to work as straight-forwardly as CrossFire, but I've never personally seen it in action.

As far as going into other pro cards, like pre-ATi FireGL, 3DLabs, E&S, Dynamic Pictures, Intergraph, etc I wouldn't suggest it unless you just want it as a novelty as their DirectX support is usually relatively limited, and their performance in games is also relatively limited (they just aren't optimized for it). A lot of those cards also usually require AGP Pro and/or are generally huge, which makes them unsuitable for many cases/builds.

As far as "why do pro cards cost so much?" - the simplest answer is support, testing, and certification; a lot of pro cards are application certified for various professional applications (and it goes beyond CAD), and have drivers that are heavily optimized for those specific applications as well. On the hardware end, usually special connectors, more RAM, etc are common. At the very high end, there's usually option boards (that add more $$$) that can provide various additional functionality (like SDI, or house sync/I/O for driving video walls or VR environments). You're paying for all of this on a low-volume part that still has to turn a profit, so the prices are accordingly higher.

Other thoughts: Both the nVidia and ATi naming schemes for these cards (especially ATi) are more complicated than they need to be, so I'd suggest looking up whatever card you're interested in against Wikipedia's "Comparison of ATi/nVidia GPUs" tables to see what generation/era the card actually comes out of, and whether or not it's worth your time.

Coincidentally, last night I had out a Quadro4 900 XGL for a system I'm putting together. I understand it's the equivalent of a Ti4600 128MB. From looking at the Quadro, and comparing to the TI4200s I've had, I believe the Quadro has some real advantage in it's component quality.
For one, the capacitors are all Sanyo, some of them being Os-con polymers. Consumer cards are more likely to come with cheaper caps, but sometimes you get lucky.

One of the Ti4200s I have was bought NOS a few years ago for a kid's PC, and it came back to me dead 1-2 years later. From looking at the card, the apparent cause of death is overheating because the heatsink lost contact with the GPU. It's hard to describe in text, but the push pins just have 2 "hooks" on them, and one of them didn't hold into place properly so the heatsink tilted. I expect the GPU fried.
The push pins on the Quadro are a different type. They are a cylinder shape with a center pin, similar to some of the slot-1 retention brackets I've seen. They are clearly much stronger, and they show no willingness to wiggle whatsoever.
Push pins are a little thing that could be changed of course, and not all cards will use the same type of pins. It's just another indicator of the standards of build quality though.
I noticed the Quadro also has an extra unused 3pin fan header installed. I don't know what for. They also have dual DVI outputs, which from what I understand required additional components vs the 1xVGA, 1xDVI that consumer cards normally had.

All these little things reinforce the obvious assumption that they spent more money on components for the Quadros. I think it's a possibility that every little component on the Quadro might potentially be a more reliable part than the functional equivalent on the consumer card. I think the reverse is much less likely.
I get frustrated with gaming video cards dying, I think they're the least reliable PC component next to maybe hard drives.
I don't care about the applications the Quadro cards were sold for, but assuming(*) that they can run games just as well as an equivalent Geforce, then I don't see any downside, and maybe they have a lower failure rate.
* = likely a faulty assumption, but I don't know. There is generally thought to be a game performance penalty with the Quadro, but I haven't been able to find solid information on that. I wish I had a Geforce equivalent model to compare.

For now, I'm tempted to look at Quadros as a better built Geforce.

shamino wrote:

Coincidentally, last night I had out a Quadro4 900 XGL for a system I'm putting together. I understand it's the equivalent of a Ti4600 128MB. From looking at the Quadro, and comparing to the TI4200s I've had, I believe the Quadro has some real advantage in it's component quality.
For one, the capacitors are all Sanyo, some of them being Os-con polymers. Consumer cards are more likely to come with cheaper caps, but sometimes you get lucky.

Good point on build quality on older cards. I think on newer boards it's probably less of a concern, but for PCI and AGP era cards it is a very good point.

I noticed the Quadro also has an extra unused 3pin fan header installed. I don't know what for. They also have dual DVI outputs, which from what I understand required additional components vs the 1xVGA, 1xDVI that consumer cards normally had.

Are you sure the connector is actually for connecting a fan, and not for a 3-pin stereo breakout cable (or some other kind of breakout connector)? 😊

* = likely a faulty assumption, but I don't know. There is generally thought to be a game performance penalty with the Quadro, but I haven't been able to find solid information on that. I wish I had a Geforce equivalent model to compare.

Generally, especially with newer cards, the Quadro variant is clocked lower than the GeForce, and afaik Ultra-spec cards are never carried over to Quadro (for example compare Quadro FX 1000 and 2000 to GeForce FX 5800 and 5800 Ultra). You can find benchmarks in gaming for some cards if you dig around a little bit, but I'm not aware of anything for Quadro4 boards specifically. I think Tom's has included Quadro in their VGA Charts for the last few rounds as well (I know the K6000 appears in the current iteration).