Archive notice: This article was originally published on July 27, 2010. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Nvidia promises “instant photorealism” with its new series, using what it calls the first physically accurate renderer, which is then intended to enable realistic global illumination throughout the scene through interactive GPU rendering. Based on information available so far, however, this technology, called “iRay”, requires the power of a twelve-core Nehalem processor.
The specifications of the cards presented:
The Quadro 4000 comes with 256 CUDA cores, has 2 gigabytes of DDR5 memory, offers bandwidth of 89.6 gigabytes per second and consumes 142 watts.
The Quadro 5000 already has 352 CUDA cores and 2.5 GB of RAM, transfers data at 120 GB/s, and also includes ECC, SLIFR and FSAA and is compatible with SDI (Serial Digital Interface).
The Quadro 6000 has 448 CUDA cores and six gigabytes. Anyone for whom that is still not enough can obtain the QuadroPlex 7000 when it becomes available: because it effectively consists of “two cards”, it has 896 cores and 12 gigabytes of memory and transfers 144 gigabytes per second (in 384-bit mode). The QuadroPlex 7600 also supports Fast Double Precision, ECC, SLIFR and FSAA, as well as SLI Mosaic Mode, and is SDI-compatible.
Nvidia has not yet provided any information about availability or price.
