Both cards have their pros and cons:
The GTX is much better at performance:
http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-Quadro-K4200-vs-Nvidia-GTX-980/2838vs2576
The GTX 980 is based on the newer second-generation Maxwell
architecture, which means that it will more likely support newer
technologies than the Quadro K4200 (which is still based on the
first-generation Kepler architecture despite being part of the newest
Quadro lineup).
About the Quadro:
So I was going to buy the Nvidia Quadro K4200, because I was told that
its drivers supported better viewport performance. However, I saw many
users on various forums say that they were not impressed by the
viewport performance bump it provided, and that it was negligible.
They were in the "GTX-has-much-better-specs-for-the-price" camp. "Team
GTX"
I've then seen people with the viewpoint that specs don't matter at
all, and that it's "all in the drivers." ("Team Quadro") They proclaim
that Quadro's superior drivers make a dramatic difference in Max
workflow, and is totally worth the hefty price. They also say that
there are important hardware differences as well, that it's not just
optimized Quadro/throttled GTX drivers.
"Team GTX" then counters that this USED to be true, but that Quadro
and GTX have converged in recent years. They give anecdotes on how
well their Many of the benchmarks and discussions online are either
outdated (Quadro NON-Kepler series compared, for instance), or they
just compare just gaming cards/workstation cards without crossover.
I've used head-to-head benchmark sites which show the GTX 980 being
superior by a wide margin. But again, the benchmarks seem to be
targeted at gamers.
Further complicating things are the GTX 970/980 vs. the Titan. It
seems that there is little advantage offered by the Titan to justify
the price for me.
source
See also:
GTX 900 series graphic cards are not supported for now from ADOBE
Developers to get nvidia drivers and to certify them as ADOBE SIGNED
GTX 900 DRIVERS as Nvidia do with Microsoft for Windows (WHQL-Windows
Hardware Quality Labs)...for now GTX 900 GPUs work practicully Based
on CUDA API and the GPU GM204 isnide of GTX 980 works without Maxwell
Improvements but it reacts as a old Fermi or Kepler one.
Now for the moment all beasts as HP Z840 , Precision T7810 , Celsius
R940 , Thinkstation P900 are based on Quadro Cards because the drivers
signed for this GPUs has ISV Certifications for all media , including
here and Decoders and Encoders on VIDEO for AE and PR.
Its not important to select a GPU that has a lot of Gpixel/s or
Gtexel/s or a lot of memory bandwidth (ok they are importat
buuut..)...Select a certified GPU as the first Like Quadro
2000/4000/5000/6000 Low Budget now and Quadro K
2000/2200/4000/4200/5000/5200 or Special Game GPUs that are Certified
for AE and PR ,GTX 780 ,GTX Titan and GTX 780 Ti and than see the
specs.
source
There is a much more detailed explanation in a similar question:
In general:
If you need lots of memory than you need Tesla or Quadro. Consumer cards ATM have max 1.5 Gb (GTX 480) while Teslas and Quadros up to 6
Gb.
GF10x series cards have their double precision (FP64) performance capped at 1/8-th of the single precision (FP32) performance, while the
architecture is capable of 1/2. Yet another market segmentation trick,
quite popular nowadays among hardware manufacturers. Crippling the
GeForce line is meant to give the Tesla line an advantage in HPC; GTX
480 is in fact faster than Tesla 20x0 - 1.34TFlops vs 1.03 TFlops,
177.4 Gb vs 144 Gb/sec (peak).
Tesla and Quadro are (supposed to be) more thoroughly tested and therefore less prone to produce errors that are pretty much irrelevant
in gaming, but when it comes to scientific computing, just a single
bit flip can trash the results. NVIDIA claims that Tesla cards are
QC-d for 24/7 use.
A recent paper (Haque and Pande, Hard Data on Soft Errors: A
Large-Scale Assessment of Real-World Error Rates in GPGPU) suggests
that Tesla is indeed less error prone.
- My experience is that GeForce cards tend to be less reliable, especially at constant hight load. Proper cooling is very important,
as well as avoiding overclocked cards including factory overclokced
models
source
There is also a discussion about this in the comments section in this post
There is a clear performance difference in
general-purpose GPU computing using CUDA. While GeForces do support
double-precision arithmetic, their performance appears to be
artifically capped at 1/8 single-precision performance, whereas
Quadros get 1/2 of single-precision performance, as one would expect.
Disclaimer: this is second-hand knowledge, I don’t do CUDA myself. In
OpenGL, on the other hand, both Quadros and GeForces only use
single-precision arithmetic. This is based on observing our CAVE,
where the Quadros running the render nodes show exactly the same
rounding problems when working with large-extent model data as regular
GeForces do. Fortunately, there are workarounds in place.
Another useful link that stvn66 found and will sum things up:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/GTX-980-Ti-Linux-CUDA-performance-vs-Titan-X-and-GTX-980-659/
