14 DAY TRIAL // Nvidia has unveiled a new professional graphics card based on the G92 architecture, the Quadro FX 3700. According to the company's spokespersons, the new video adapter is twice as those in the previous generations of Nvidia products.
The new video card is aimed at the professional market segment. The Quadro FX 3700 comes rigged with 112 parallel processors, 512 MB of onboard graphics memory and a 256-bit memory interface. The card takes advantage of the PCI-Express 2.0 specifications set that practically doubles the data transfer rate between the GPU and the second generation of chipsets up to an incredible 16 Gbps count. The video adapter also features extensive energy management capabilities that makes it comply to the Energy Star 4.0 specifications.
"The NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700 graphics board is proof positive that NVIDIA continues to invest heavily in leading-edge solutions for professional users," said Dan Vivoli, executive vice president of marketing at NVIDIA. "It combines rich features with outstanding performance to successfully complete a top-to-bottom series of professional visualization solutions that are unmatched in the industry."
The Quadro FX 3700 graphics card integrates the NVIDIA Application Configuration Engine (ACE), that can deliver on-the-fly optimal configuration for both software and hardware in order to deliver the maximum power output. As it would have been expected for a high-end video card, the FX 3700 natively supports the SLI technology that allows the user to dynamically scale the desired graphics performance.
The card also features the advanced Nvidia Unified Architecture, that allows the internal shaders to render realistic lighting effects such as dispersion, reflection, refraction, BRDF models and physical surface properties: casting effects, porosity, molded surfaces. The Quadro FX 3700 graphics board is Nvidia CUDA compatible. The latter is a development environment based on the C language that unleashes the power of the GPU's parallel computing features.
Nvidia's Quadro FX 3700 video card is already on sale. Since it addresses the needs of professionals, the price is a little too high to allow you to dream of a Triple-SLI configuration. You can have your Quadro FX 3700 for as much as $1600 a piece, but it's worth the effort, since you will be able to play the latest Super Mario at a blazing 2880 x 2306 pixel resolution.