To tell the truth with the workstation cards, most of its in the drivers, making the price pretty unnacceptable in truth. "Oh, hes a graphic designer. Lets make him spend more money than he should do!".
Reason? Well, before the 8800 series (and some have managed it with these cards also), you could basically hack the standard drivers to allow Workstation functionality on standard retail cards, since the cards themselves have all the required hardware.
It is simply the drivers stopping the cards from acting in the way the 3D applications, etc want them to.
You wouldn't get the added support, BUT, you would get all the functionality promised by the workstation versions, and gaming to boot.