Hey there

There are 2 types of cards, workstation cards and gaming cards, workstation cards are generally based on the same technology as gaming cards but have dedicated drivers and a bit of a hardware twist to give them some reliability/performance tweeks when handeling 3d data in applications such as maya, they may also come with more RAM etc but as I'm not up to date with them I'm not too sure.

As for nvidia vs ATI, all I can say is that I use nvidia on my personal machines, at uni they run ATI's (got to point out that they are not the fires of the Quadros there the gaming cards) they both work fine but the ATI's have a few little glitches, nothing to worry about but there there non the less compared to the Gforces, other than that, on performance I dont know as im not gamer by a long chalk, solitare and minesweepers about as much as I play! BUT I have seen in 3d world reviews of the Workstation cards that give the Nvidia better scores over the ATIs, pretty much accross the board.

Yes you can play games on the workstation cards, although I have heard that they play them slightly slower, but on the other hand people say there the same??

You can use gaming cards with maya and other apps no probs, as I said I use a Nvidia Gforce 7900 GTX 512 mb in my laptop and a 4000 series gforce in my desktop with no probs, which might save you a few quid for a better processor/more RAM, as ive found that these pretty much have a more important role when it comes to rendering.