Always wondered what's the difference between a gamer and a 'pro'. Don't both of them demand the same of a laptop - good graphics and cpu performance? I've seen numerous posts claiming that 'pros' and gamers have massively different needs, but aren't they one and the same? I know I'm bound to take alot of flak for this post, but I'm truly perplexed by this.
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Pro vs. Gamer
- Thread starter james010101
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Well there is a difference from what i understand.
Lets say you're working with 3D in Maya and do a lot of rendering and stuff like that, a Xeon Processor and Nvidia Quadro or whatever they're called is probably a good choice, but they're not really designed for gaming.
A Gamer PC is like i7-4770K with Nvidia 780.
at least thats how i understand it.
But i consider a good Gaming PC to be more than enough for any other work regarding video / 3D / Photo.
Lets say you're working with 3D in Maya and do a lot of rendering and stuff like that, a Xeon Processor and Nvidia Quadro or whatever they're called is probably a good choice, but they're not really designed for gaming.
A Gamer PC is like i7-4770K with Nvidia 780.
at least thats how i understand it.
But i consider a good Gaming PC to be more than enough for any other work regarding video / 3D / Photo.
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What about pro-gamers?
If you think about "professional" (= making money with it, literally) 3d-rendering, you have "professional" 3d chips (FireGL, Quadro, or whatever they are called now). However, the gap between consumer ("gaming") 3d chips and the professional ones seems to have narrowed the past decade (back then - simplyfying now - the main difference was in rendering speed / compexity; "pro": complex scenes with low fps; "gamer": simple scenes with high fps and many "tweaks").
Pro is today such an overused term. Usually it just marks a higher priced product. The free trial versions of apps have their normal names and the paid (no ads, all features active) versions are called somethingsomethingPRO.
An professional that uses their machine for work might need nothing more than a decent office notebook. Webdesign, all sorts of office work, financial manager, broker, .....
3D rendering usually just needs a fast CPU and only a limited amount of actual ridiculous GPU power like a gamer does. Gaming is mostly GPU and 30% CPU at least at the higher settings. Most software people think of when workstations are concerned usually want rather more CPU than the very best possible GPU as only parts are GPU accelerated and a significant amount of work is still left to the cpu.
Movie editing needs very little GPU unless you add some effects and even there I doubt you need too much because for animation or great special effects a gpu would help save the day either. Photoshop has some accelerated filters. A few tedious things get a snappier, like you get smooth rotate. Most of the time a GPU will just sit there waiting for the user to do something demanding.
Gaming is different. It is mostly GPU and non stop. CPU only handles a little AI, networking and feeding the GPU with more data. Also gaming is heavily DirectX centric with lots of optimizations that help performance without sacrificing too much visual quality. Speed first and not too many crashes and artifacts.
Pro apps usually focus on OpenGL and pro GPUs (Quadro, FirePro) try to do their work right rather than as fast as possible with okay output. Those cards also fare better on double precision (double 64bit vs float 32bit). Logic for that is usually shut off or completely left out of geforce gamer gpus to save space or power consumption. Games don't waste time with double precision as it wouldn't offer any perceivable picture quality difference for shaders and pixels have only so much color information.
I think most actual pros of all breeds need stability. Secondly they need a fast CPU (lots of RAM) and after that there are some who benefit to some degree from a faster GPU. It is rarely the fastest GPU possible.
There ture gaming beasts with lots of power but workstations rarely even sport the best possible quadro and if, never more than one.
Gamers basically need the fastest GPU they can have with a good enough CPU. Usually the top of the line mobile CPU is a waste of money over the entry quad core and just produces heat that is better put towards a faster GPU. Gamers also don't need all that much RAM and stability isn't that big of a deal as games and graphics drivers are the weakest link anyway.
An professional that uses their machine for work might need nothing more than a decent office notebook. Webdesign, all sorts of office work, financial manager, broker, .....
3D rendering usually just needs a fast CPU and only a limited amount of actual ridiculous GPU power like a gamer does. Gaming is mostly GPU and 30% CPU at least at the higher settings. Most software people think of when workstations are concerned usually want rather more CPU than the very best possible GPU as only parts are GPU accelerated and a significant amount of work is still left to the cpu.
Movie editing needs very little GPU unless you add some effects and even there I doubt you need too much because for animation or great special effects a gpu would help save the day either. Photoshop has some accelerated filters. A few tedious things get a snappier, like you get smooth rotate. Most of the time a GPU will just sit there waiting for the user to do something demanding.
Gaming is different. It is mostly GPU and non stop. CPU only handles a little AI, networking and feeding the GPU with more data. Also gaming is heavily DirectX centric with lots of optimizations that help performance without sacrificing too much visual quality. Speed first and not too many crashes and artifacts.
Pro apps usually focus on OpenGL and pro GPUs (Quadro, FirePro) try to do their work right rather than as fast as possible with okay output. Those cards also fare better on double precision (double 64bit vs float 32bit). Logic for that is usually shut off or completely left out of geforce gamer gpus to save space or power consumption. Games don't waste time with double precision as it wouldn't offer any perceivable picture quality difference for shaders and pixels have only so much color information.
I think most actual pros of all breeds need stability. Secondly they need a fast CPU (lots of RAM) and after that there are some who benefit to some degree from a faster GPU. It is rarely the fastest GPU possible.
There ture gaming beasts with lots of power but workstations rarely even sport the best possible quadro and if, never more than one.
Gamers basically need the fastest GPU they can have with a good enough CPU. Usually the top of the line mobile CPU is a waste of money over the entry quad core and just produces heat that is better put towards a faster GPU. Gamers also don't need all that much RAM and stability isn't that big of a deal as games and graphics drivers are the weakest link anyway.
Nicely put, another thing that "pros" need is disk speed, size and redundancy, something that gamers couldn't care less about.
The winner of the Dota 2 tournament last week won $1.4 million.
A descent gamer that has a great fan base can earn around $20.000 per month excluding prize money from tournaments ( so he can earn alot more than 20.000 per month depending on his success on tournaments)
Professional gamers are earning more money than "real" sports such as darting and professional bodybuilding in terms of prize money.
The money in sports all depends on how many people are watching it. Darting is not really any competition but e-sports isn't really big either (Korea being the sole exception). There are handful of people that can actually make more than "this is a nice hobby" money of playing video games.
It is very few. There are only so many games that there is even any money behind and in those very few people earn actual money.
It is not really a profession for most people. Also those ridiculous players care more about keyboards and mice than about GPUs and graphics quality such as normal gamers. The games with money behind don't have very high requirements.
It is very few. There are only so many games that there is even any money behind and in those very few people earn actual money.
It is not really a profession for most people. Also those ridiculous players care more about keyboards and mice than about GPUs and graphics quality such as normal gamers. The games with money behind don't have very high requirements.
Gamer = Hackintosh desktop. They use the top-notch dGPU in the market and run both Mac OS X and Windows. They game on Windows because it is the best platform for gaming...
Pro = Just a silly label for freelance people who make a good living with their laptop...
Gamers need the top line GPU (and a mid class level CPU) in order to run everything smoothly.
Pros on the other hand just need hardware catered to specific needs, such as Professional oriented graphics (like the FirePro in AMD's side or Quadro on nVidia's side). These GPUs have some graphic capabilities, but their true potential is elsewhere (more physics dedicated abilities and better number crunching power for complex compute apps).