NVIDIA Enters the High-End Professional Graphics Cards Market with Quadro FX

by Anton Shilov
01/29/2003 | 09:25 AM

NVIDIA last week announced their new series of professional graphics cards based on the most feature-rich graphics processor at the moment, the GeForce FX. Since the company simply cannot supply the sufficient quantity of consumer graphics cards based on the mentioned VPU, it looks reasonable to sell the processors they have in stock on professional market, where profit margin is much higher compared to high-end desktop solutions. Moreover, with the Quadro FX 2000 and the Quadro FX 1000, NVIDIA enters the market of high-end professional graphics card that cost more than $1000.

Here is how the NVIDIA Quadro FX Product Line looks like at the moment:

• Quadro FX 2000:
  • Performance = 2.0x Quadro4 980 XGL;
  • Dual Slot Thermal Solution;
  • Dual DVI, 1 Dual Link TMDS Display;
  • Stereo Connector;
  • Genlock/Framelock Capable;
  • MSRP $1995, ESP $1400;
• Quadro FX 1000:
  • Performance = 1.5x Quadro4 980 XGL;
  • Single Slot Thermal Solution;
  • Supplemental Power;
  • Dual Single Link TMDS;
  • Stereo Connector;
  • MSRP $1295, ESP $900;

Amazon International.com web-site published their benchmarks of the new NVIDIA’s professional graphics cards. Take look:

As you see, the Quadro FX is not times faster than the predecessors here, but keep in mind that the main advantage of the newcomer is in its features. Like following:

• Vertex Shaders 2.0+:
  • Generalized Vertex Processing;
  • Up to 65536 vertex instructions;
  • 256 constants;
  • Loops & Branching;
  • Call & Return – Subroutines.
• Pixel Shader 2.0+:
  • Generalized Pixel Shading;
  • Full instruction set for pixels;
  • Up to 2048 shader instructions;
  • Up to 16 textures per pixel;
  • Conditional execution;
  • Arbitrary Texture Filters.

Leading software developers said during the NVIDIA’s Quadro FX presentation, that their current or upcoming products already utilise benefits of the GeForce FX / Quadro FX capabilities.