NVidia launches first visual computing system for graphics market
Vendor claims Quadro Plex 1000 is four times as quick as its fastest high-end gaming card
Vendor nVidia is taking graphics out of the PC with the launch of the first external visual computing system for the professional graphics market.
With rival ATI being snapped up by AMD (CRN, 31 July), nVidia has been quick to announce a raft of solutions to capitalise on any customer confusion.
The Quadro Plex 1000 is aimed at the dedicated graphics market. It offers a drastically enhanced performance over nVidia’s current internal graphics solutions for workstations. The vendor claimed it can drive up to 80 billion pixels per second and seven billion vertices per second, which is almost four times faster than nVidia’s fastest high-end gaming card. It will cost about £9,000.
The QuadroPlex 1000 also supports ultra-high resolutions of 148 megapixels on 16 synchronised digital-output channels and eight high-definition input channels.
The unit comes as a desktop-styled unit or rackmount configuration and is suited for applications that power multiple streams of 4K high-definition video, 3D design, scientific and medical visualisation, oil and gas exploration or visual simulation training.
Michael Jones, chief technologist at Google Earth, Maps and Local, said: “Seeing the new nVidia Quadro Plex running Google Earth is an astounding visual experience. This extreme level of performance and resolution takes the viewer from visual simulation to emotional reality, showing the Earth in its full detail and glory.”
Tom Coull, chief executive of professional software company ModViz, said: “The Quadro Plex offers unprecedented graphics power for advanced visualisation on today’s workstations. Using it with our Virtual Graphics Platform software system lets professional 3D visualisation applications take full advantage of the Quadro Plex multi-GPU architecture, achieving optimal performance through the transparent division and distribution of rendering tasks.”
NVidia also unveiled an updated version of its Gelato final-frame rendering software. The version 2.1 beta boasts easier texture baking, full support for Maya bake sets, a 30 per cent performance boost for ray tracing over version 2.0 and improved stereo rendering features. It also comes with support for 64bit Windows.
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