NVIDIA brings out QuadroFX cards with 1.5gb of RAM
Nvidia released powerful G80GL unified-shader graphics chip, known as Quadro in public at Game Developers Conference in San Francisco yesterday. The chip comes out in three boards: Quadro FX 4600, FX 5600 and Plex VCS Model IV.
Quadro cards are fighting in a way different class than GeForce ones: Quadros are purely workstation cards designed for high-end film effects artists, oil and gas explorers (programs like CADs, After Effect, Maya, 3DS Max etc). They are not designed for playing at all. With the new G80GL -based Quadros you can even use a concept called GP-CPU, allowing some general programs to run on the GPU instead of the CPU to save the CPU (and of course, programmers time). There is also rumors running about Nvidia’s and Apple’s co-operations on this chip. The latest top- Mac Pro is already equipped with Quadro FX 4500, so this kind of rumors are on nice base.
Quadro FX 4600
Quadro FX 4600 is built on same base as GeForce 8800GTS, but features a full 768MB of GDDR-3 memory, a 384-bit interface with bandwidth of 57.6 GB/s. The 4600’s memory is clocked at 600MHz (1.2GHz effective memory). The card consumes respectively 134W.
Quadro FX 5600
The Quadro FX 5600, based on the 8800GTX, has memory placed on both sides of the PCB, so it bangs in massive 1.5GB of video memory clocked at 800MHz (1.6GHz effective).The card will consume 171W.
Each of them contain two dual-link DVI ports and stereo audio out. Both have optional add-on cards for Genlock pro-video editing. The cars will also consume two pci-e slots. Of course, this kind of candy doesn’t come free: the Quadro FX 4600 will retail for $1995, and the Quadro FX 5600 will cost your company a nice $2999. Vista’s DirectX 10 graphics system is of course supported, with optimized OpenGL ICD drivers included for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. The boards also support nVidia’s CUDA computing language (for the GP-CPU concept). Until the arrival of FireGL R600 with 2GB of memory, this is the fastest professional 3D card with the most video memory in the world!
Plex VCS Model IV
Third new release was a new model of Nvidias rendering box, a racked collection of GPUs in their own box. The specs of this Model IV weren’t specified, but when looking for the older models, there isn’t much to say: with around $20,000 you get the best graphics rendering in the world with two Quadro cards inside. Old model II can even go up to 64x SLI FSAA -antialiasing. Nvidia recommend this rendering box for not only content creators but also people doing scientific modeling and simulation work. These boxes are controlled by a PC or workstation over network. Both 32- and 64-bit and Linux and Windows will do the job.
More information:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro_fx_5600_4600.html
As you might have noticed, I am yet another new editor at RLSLOG. I am from Finland and studying maths and programming. I will post of tech news but also about several movie, software and game releases.
Cheers,
Karl
Comments(19)
Damn, wouldn’t that be a nice card to play games with? That thing is sick.
well having a card with 1.5 GB of memory while you have only 768 of RAM would be little contraproductive in my case
bballer: Well with the price tag it has, u can allmost buy 3 8800GTX of the worst kind and put in SLI.
The sad part, is that the firmware in these “CAD-cards” doesnt work to play with games and vice versa with the games cards not working so great with cad. Damn u Nvidia!
Nice… I want mine. NOW!
Welcome Karl, I hope you enjoy the ride
i wish i had that + gaming cards
my computer would be godlike !!
that is sick but too expensive for common user maybe its better to get some “cheap” ps3 or x360 considering the prices of these, and the pc for the rest,a pc must last at least 5 years for me cause im not workin for the damn machines hehehee peace out =)
maybe I could get stable fps in cs:s with that ine
First of all these cards are of little concern to gamers, you idiots are salivating over something which isn’t designed primarily for gaming.
Secondly to say that $20,000 gets you the best graphics rendering in the world is a totally rediculous and absolutely wrong statement. Go visit a proper rendering farm and then you will see the error of that statement.
That box would make a nice difference in rendering times / quality in my lightwave scenes
Any with a shit video card and a p3 you can render movie quality effects. It will take years to actually render out an entire scene, but you can do it.
cool news
Would be lovely if you could incorporate some sort of firmware/driver swapping capability for app rendering vs. game requirements. If the chipset supported it of course. A lot of folks who work at home would probably pony up high end bang for buck if they could also game with it. As it is, at least with the folks I know, most trade off dedicated GPU cycles for a more versatile soho box.
Personally these types of cards are overkill for any game. Nod needed and only for professional designers using 3d apps etc.
12: They aint overkill, in fact they suck pretty hard if u wanna play games.
Games and programs like Autocad & Solidworks doesnt use the same rendering. So this cards is just made to be VERY good at rendering 3D, while game-cards is good at rendering games.
They’re not for games. Maybe that’s what it is…Too much gaming have fucked up your ability to read.
I want all gamers to read the following 10 times before posting a response:
“Quadros are purely workstation cards designed for high-end film effects artists, oil and gas explorers (programs like CADs, After Effect, Maya, 3DS Max etc). They are not designed for playing at all.”
would second that. Quadros and FireGLs (ATi) are designed for 3D Rendering and not actual gameplay, these cards perform really poorly when they’re pitted in In-game benchies. besides, a single 8800GTX with a Core 2 Duo E6600 is pretty much all you need for playing currently available titles at max settings.
For all these people that sayd these cards suck at gamin, can u explain this to me: Vista’s DirectX 10 graphics system is of course supported, with optimized OpenGL ICD drivers ?
Its right that 8800 gts cards suck at some rendering things supportet by maya etc, but the other way round i dont think thats the case at all…
Rendering peeps:
I have a question for you. I remember a friend of mine telling me about modding or flashing nvidia cards and ati cards to their quadro/fireGL counterparts and saving a whole bunch of $$$$.. Does anyone know of such a page (It was hell finding it last time) and also if you have some recommendation (for modding to quadro or firegl).
Also – would you recommend intel or AMD for rendering purposes if buying new everything today? Intel’s huge cache makes me instinctively believe it would be more optimal for rendering purposes?
Quadro cards are better than ge-force cards for gaming. It is proven that they are better in games with the doom 3 engine.
It’s just to funny, can’t grt the drivers to work for
Vista 64x with SLI can’t imagine the nightmare! LOL……….