NVIDIA Launches Quadro 3000 Professional Graphics Cards

by Anton Shilov
07/23/2003 | 05:05 PM

As expected, NVIDIA Corporation expanded product line of professional graphics cards by announcing solutions powered by the GeForce FX 5900 technology. The novelties are targeted for various high-end markets, such as medical and satellite imaging, automobile manufacturing, oil and gas exploration, video post-production, and broadcast.

This time NVIDIA launched Quadro FX 3000 and 3000G products with similar performance, but with richer feature-set provided by the latter. According to details issued by NVIDIA, the Quadro FX 3000 and Quadro FX 3000G offer very slight performance increase over the Quadro FX 2000 despite of more efficient architecture and two times higher peak memory bandwidth.

Here is the list of improvements found in the Quadro FX 3000/3000G over the previous generation solutions:

• High performance graphics memory with 27.2GB/s memory bandwidth;
• Single system powerwall: users digitally specify overlap and blending for two projected images, even from inexpensive projectors. Allows any application to be projected from a single system onto large surfaces.
• 256MBof graphics memory will be able to drive up to 3840x2400 displays for professional applications including medical, oil & gas, and satellite imaging.

The differences between NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000 and NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000G are the following:

• Framelock - Allows professionals to link multiple systems in a cluster to scale power to problem size for life-sized visualization.
• Genlock—Enables synchronization with standard signal formats and house-sync signals for video post-production, broadcast, compositing, and editing solutions.

The NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000 will be available from IBM in its IntelliStation MPro workstation and from HP in its Leadership Graphics Program. The NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000G, with genlock and framelock capabilities, is planned to be available with HP Workstations xw6000 and xw8000, and with HP’s scalable visualization technology in Fall 2003 and from IBM by special order.

NVIDIA Quadro distributors including PNY (USA and Europe), Leadtek (Asia/Pacific), and Elsa (Japan), value-added resellers, and system builders such as BOXX Technologies, @Xi Computer, Colfax International, RackSaver, and Polywell Computers worldwide are selling the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000 series, which is in volume production.

Surprisingly, NVIDIA does not specify the suggested retail prices of such innovative professional solutions.