NVIDIA has just introduced the new Quadro FX 4800 graphics card, designed to give professional users the necessary graphics performance required by today's high-end workstation desktop systems. The new graphics card is part of NVIDIA's high-performance Quadro FX workstation range of graphics cards, and has been designed to deliver a total of 1.5GB of graphics memory. It also makes full use of NVIDIA's proprietary graphics technologies, including CUDA, which comes to provide no less than 192 parallel computing cores for the ultimate graphics performance.

 

"In this increasingly competitive landscape, it's imperative that professionals deliver better, faster and more cost-effective results," said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions, NVIDIA. "NVIDIA is not only addressing this challenge, but is raising the ultra-high-end visualization bar by creating specialized solutions to meet the direct needs of professionals - whether it be a geophysicists or MCAD designer."

 

According to the green company, its new workstation product can now deliver two times the performance of previous generation ultra-high-end graphics cards, a feature that is mainly due to the card's built-in 192 CUDA parallel computing cores. Additional features include the capability of a real-time visualization of large data sets, which is ensured by the card's impressive 1.5 GB of graphics memory. This, in turn, enables the Quadro FX 4800 to provide fill rates of 38 billion texels per second, while the geometry performance is of 300 million triangles per second.

 

The card's specifications list includes a 76.8 GB/s memory bandwidth, support for OpenGL 3.0, Shader Model 4.0 and Microsoft's DirectX 10. The card comes with a dual-slot cooling solution and a maximum specified power consumption of 150W.

 

Regarding pricing and availability, the Santa Clara, California-based chip maker has announced that its new Quadro FX 4800 graphics card will become available through leading system manufacturers and workstation integrators, as well as NVIDIA channel partners, for a manufacturer's suggested price tag of US$1,999. Partners expected to release the new card include PNY Technologies (US and EMEA), Leadtek (APAC), and Elsa (Japan).