NVIDIA will announce at least one more professional graphics card based on the GeForce FX technology, the company said on Thursday. The Quadro FX 500 that will appear soon will be the third professional graphics card in the GeForce FX familiy.

The new Quadro FX 500 is reportedly based on the NV31 also known as the GeForce FX 5600 graphics processor. The core and memory clocks of the novelty are unknown, but keeping in mind NVIDIA’s efficient drivers for professional applications, you should not be too concerned about the frequencies, as the solution will still be able to outperform the previous-generation product at the same price-point by 20%.

GeForce FX 5600 GPUs support DirectX 9.0 and beyond pixel and vertex shaders, memory bandwidth saving technologies, Intellisample 2.0 antialiasing and so on. The chip itself is made using 0.13 micron technology, features 4 rendering pipelines, supports up to 256MB of 128-bit DDR SDRAM memory, integrates dual 400MHz RAMDACs and TMDS transmitter. The Quadro FX 500 is based on the same micro-architecture and boast with a number of optimizations that improve performance in professional applications.

The Quadro FX 500 will be slower than the previous generation Quadro 900 XGL, but will offer 1.2 times higher performance than the previous cost-effective professional solution Quadro 550/580 XGL.

Just like consumer’s versions of the GeForce FX 5600 graphics cards, the new Quadro FX 500 will utilise single-slot cooling system. The new professional graphics card is equipped with D-Sub and DVI-I connectors.

The Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price is still to be decided, but it was indicated that it should be in the range of $449.