NVIDIA Launches Quadro 2000 and 600 Professional Graphics

NVIDIA did say that its Fermi architecture will be at the base of all of its new video cards and, in tune with this plan, the company has now revealed the Quadro 2000 and Quadro 600 professional graphics solutions.

The Quadro series of graphics adapters is, as NVIDIA's customers well know, the Santa Clara, California-based company's product line for the professional market.

For a long time they have been used in various workstations, mobile or otherwise, created by such companies as Dell, HP and Lenovo.

NVIDIA has now released the latest two Quadro models to make it out of its labs, the Quadro 2000 and 600, with 192 and 96 CUDA cores, respectively.

The Quadro 600 is a half-height model that focuses on versatility and performance per watt, being intended for such applications as Autodesk AutoCAD 2011.

The Quadro 2000, on the other hand, is a mid-range solution that promises to provide 1.5 times the geometry performance of its predecessor.

This is because it features the NVIDIA Scalable Geometry Engine technology, which boosts performance by a fair margin in DCC and CAD applications like SolidWorks or Autodesk 3ds Max.

“We believe the technology that NVIDIA has built into their new Quadro professional graphics, namely the new NVIDIA Fermi architecture, will provide an exceptional solution for SolidWorks users worldwide," said Nick Iwaskow, manager, Alliances, Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp.

Workstation makers like Dell, Lenovo and HP, among others, are already offering the newcomers, according to NVIDIA's press release.

The Quadro 2000 has a price of $599, while the Quadro 600 sells for $199. More information on them both may be found here.

“At last month’s GPU Technology Conference, the world learned all about the power of our Fermi architecture and how NVIDIA Quadro GPUs are being used to solve some of the world’s most complex problems,” said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions Group, NVIDIA.

“With these new Quadro solutions, we’re making this computational horsepower available for all users of professional CAD and content creation software applications,” he added.