Nvidia powers up high-end Quadro FX

Launches 3000 and 3000G

Nvidia today introduced the latest additions to its Quadro line of workstation graphics cards, the FX 3000 and the FX 3000G.

The new chips more than double the memory bandwidth of Nvidia's previous top-of-the-range offering, the Quadro FX 2000, from 12.8GBps to 27.2GBps. Boards based on the new parts will support up to 256MB of DDR 2 SDRAM, double what the 2000 can handle. That 256MB will allow display resolutions of up to 3840 x 2400 pixels.

Both chips support the ability to manage two overhead projection units, allowing them to be combined to create a single, large image, or to blend two separate images together.

In addition, the 3000G provides framelock facilities so that cards in multiple systems can be clustered to co-operatively render a single image. It also offers genlock video signal synchronisation for high-end video post-production work.

Like previous Quadro FX chips, the new 3000-series parts provide fill 128-bit floating point precision and 12-bit sub-pixel precision. They can render eight pixels per clock and apply 16 textures per pixel. They offer 16x full-screen anti-aliasing.

Nvidia said the Quadro FX 3000 will be initially made available on boards built into workstations from IBM and HP. The 3000G will be offered by both companies, from HP in the autumn and from IBM "by special order". Both chips are in volume production now. ®