Workstation cards are usually optimized for huge polygon count and overdraw. They're not meant to render at 100 FPS but rather provide a consistent performance for intensive work. A game card is optimized for relativly low polygon count and overdraw. Performance drops much more drastically.
Most games use visibility determination in software to make sure the card is not stressed too much. This is possible because most games have narrow corridors blocking most of the surroundings, and models still clearly have sharp edges. A workstation card will have it's own visibility determination system in hardware so that even gigantic city design and rounded objects can be rendered at smooth framerates. In a nutshell, a game card uses brute force while a workstation card tries to play smart.
Anyway, 3DS MAX only uses your card for the design and preview window since the final image is mostly ray-traced. So unless it becomes unmanageably slow when working with huge scenes, I think you should be fine with a high-end game card. Many workstation cards also only have good OpenGL drivers.
