NVIDIA Corporation today launches its new professional graphics card from the Quadro FX family, the NVIDIA Quadro FX 500. The new solution will offer the same set of features provided by more expensive Quadro FX 1000 and Quadro FX 2000 professional graphics accelerators, but at substantially lower price-point.

As X-bit labs reported on the 27^th of March (see this news-story), the new Quadro FX 500 seems to be based on the GeForce FX 5600 graphics processor technology with certain improvements and optimisations. The core and memory clocks of the novelty are not specified at this time, so, expect PNY and Leadtek to officially set them later this week. According to NVIDIA’s original estimates, the Quadro FX 500 solution will be able to outperform the previous-generation product at the same price-point by roughly 20%.

NVIDIA 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 at TSMC, features 4 rendering pipelines, supports up to 256MB of 128-bit DDR SDRAM memory, integrates dual 400MHz RAMDACs and a TMDS transmitter. The Quadro FX 500 is based on the same micro-architecture and boasts with a number of optimisations 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. Also the new product will provide DirectX 9.0 as well as ultimate programmability via Cg.

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; in late March NVIDIA said that the Quadro FX 500 graphics card will cost $449. NVIDIA’s partners as well as system integrators and resellers worldwide will begin selling the solution this week, the company said today. Configuration of the actual graphics cards is to be determined.

Expect leading workstation vendors as well as software developers to support the new and more affordable programmable professional graphics card from NVIDIA.

Those, who cannot get enough speed from the Quadro FX 1000 or 2000 should wait will the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000 tp come later this year; I believe this will happen shortly, since the solution supported by the Detonator drivers even now (see more information here).