Anyone care to properly explain these workstation GPUs like AMD's Firepro and Nvidia's Quadro? What programs would each be used best for? What kind of video editing software will take the most advantage of these card's capabilities?
They have a lot higher double precision performance (used for programs that require huge amounts of memory) and are more reliable.
It's not only there architecture that differentiate them from consumer level gpus. Their drivers are optimized for programs such as CAD or Maya that even a midrange workstation will out perform even the highest end consumer gpus.
It is commonly known that programs that take advantage of OpenCL the AMD Firepros will dominate on it. Programs that are more OpenGL centered the CUDA cores are good at that. OpenCL actually becoming more common today, even on MAC workstations.