Attached Link: http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Reviews/3Dlabs_Permedia3/3Dlabs_Permedia3_01.htm

Here's some good reading on the differences between professional 3D graphics cards made for 3D applications, and those made for 3D gaming. Quote: "3D gaming cards have basically one goal in mind - the rendering of the 3D environment as fast as possible. Thus, the fillrate of the card is very important. Professional 3D cards, however, do not need the high fillrate that gaming cards need. They rely more on the polygon throughput instead. Still, many gaming cards like the RIVA TNT2 already have polygon throughputs as high as 9 million polygons / sec. The clincher however is that the 9 million polygons / sec. polygon throughput that the RIVA TNT2 is so proud of is only its peak throughput. Its sustained throughput, in reality, is much lower. On the other hand, professional 3D cards have very high sustained polygon throughputs. That's because professional applications like 3D Studio MAX rely heavily on polygon throughput. Because gaming cards have low sustained polygon throughput, they make very poor professional 3D cards."