Posted 03/31/09 at 10:21:51 AM by Paul Lilly

Nvidia this week introduced a bunch of new Quadro-series professional videocards spanning from the sub-$100 entry-level solution all the up to the high end that will hit your wallet to the tune of four digits.

"Our mission with Quadro is to help customers solve the world's most challenging visual computing problems," stated Dan Vivoli, executive vice president of marketing at Nvidia. "We learn every day from them and are humbled by their brilliance. The new lineup, with the flagship Quadro FX 4800, sets the stage for the next ten years of innovation."

On the lower end is the Quadro NVS 295, which the company says will support up to two 30-inch displays at maximum resolutions. Other cards in the new lineup, along with Nvidia's claimed standout traits, include:

• Quadro FX 5800 - first and only 4GB, ultra high-end solution suitable for large-sclae models and datasets
• Quadro FX 4800 - ultra high-end solution
• Quadro FX 3800 - single slot solution with support for SLI, multi-OS, and SDI
• Quadro FX 1800 - best price performance for workstation graphics
• Quadro FX 580 - best-in-class entry-level solution
• Quadro FX 380 - up to 50 percent faster performance

Nvidia's Quadro-based workstation cards are available now through system manufacturers such as Dell, Fujistu-Siemens, HP, and Lenovo, as well as workstation system integrators and Nvidia channel partners.

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Posted 01/22/09 at 05:15:09 PM by Andy Salisbury

Nvidia recently announced that they’ll be releasing a new “professional video editing accelerator bundle” based on their Quadro CX platform. The bundle consists of a Quadro CX video card and Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, and they claim that it will be able to encode H.264 video four times faster than a dual-core CPU.

Nvidia reports that rendering times for a one-hour movie requires 10 hours on a dual-core CPU, whereas with their Quadro CX it would only take two hours and 35 minutes.

So if you’re looking to get yourself into the video editing game with a powerful bundle like this one, be sure to act fast. The bundle will be going for $1,999 until March 31, 2009. After that, the bundle will jump up to $2,299.

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Posted 01/21/09 at 02:15:23 PM by Andy Salisbury

Nvidia’s ever growing arsenal of graphics cards has just broken into the low profile market with their Quadro NVS 420. The card features 512MB of memory, 11.2GB/sec per GPU of bandwidth, a CUDA Parallel Computing Processor, and can power up to four 30-inch displays at 2,560 x 1,600.

Admittedly the cards specs along with its size make it a pretty impressive little beast, at $499 it doesn’t seem too practical. But, should there be any small form-factor PC users out there looking to get their hands on this much power, it will be available next month.

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Posted 12/21/08 at 09:03:13 PM by Justin Kerr

Depending on the manufacturer of your notebook, finding updated drivers can be somewhat of a pain. After all, we are assuming that searching through a tangled index of cryptic model numbers probably wasn’t the game you intended to play when you bought your gaming notebook. That’s why we are pleased to pass on the contents of a press release we received from Nvidia which is intended to spread the good news. Your laptop’s GPU drivers can now be obtained directly from Nvidia.com. Using a generic driver platform should allow notebook owners to receive much more timely updates similar to their desktop based brethren. As of right now, only owners of 7, 8, and 9 series GeForce chips as well as Quadro qualify for this offer, but it’s a great start.

To further sweeten the pot, owners of 8 and 9 series GeForce chips will be given both PhysX and CUDA support through the beta driver available. A WHQL certified driver is planned for release early next year. This will go a long way towards ensuring better compatibility on gaming laptops and is something I’m sure we would all like to see migrate to other hardware manufacturers.

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