NVIDIA extended its Quadro Graphics Cards family, with the launch of new mid-range and entry-level 2D and 3D Quadro boards for professionals in the CAD/CAM, DCC, medical imaging, digital video and financial sectors. The new Quadro professional graphics also redefine the price/performance dynamic for professional graphics-from the Quadro FX 370, available for the unprecedented entry price of $129 MSRP to the Quadro FX 1700, with an MSRP of $699. These new boards have the capabilities required to visualize the latest generation of complex 2D, video and 3D content. Now there is a Quadro solution for many types of users, projects and budgets.
"NVIDIA breathed new life into the upper end of the professional graphics market, and now they’re pushing in the other direction with the Quadro FX 370- driving current generation GPU technology to a very aggressive sub $150 price point-and this focus should be rewarded once more," said Jon Peddie, principal, Jon Peddie Research. "There are a lot of budget conscious professionals out there who may have opted for consumer-class graphics in the past, but will now take the step to the promise of better performance and reliability of ISV-certified Quadro FX hardware."
The new NVIDIA unified architecture dynamically allocates geometry, shading, pixel processing and compute power, allowing 3D content developers to use the full power of the board’s rendering capabilities regardless of the type of rendering they require. Game developers who have performance-optimized polygonal models with lots of textures will devote more of the board’s shaders to textures. Automotive and aerospace engineers, whose models consist of high- density polygonal models and few or no textures, will use most of the board’s power for vertex calculations. And a styling designer working with both polygon and vertex-based models will find that the board dynamically allocates the shader pipeline based on what part and how much detail of the model is visible.