nVidia puts 'fastest card' on the table

Quadro FX 1100 outguns rivals in mid-range pro graphics market, claims card giant

Card maker nVidia has thrown down the gauntlet to its rivals in the mid-range professional graphics market by claiming its new Quadro FX 1100 outperforms them in recognised benchmark tests.

The graphics card giant has claimed that its FX 1100 out-performs high-end ATI FireGL X2, high-end 3DLabs Wildcat 4 7110, and upper mid-range ATI Fire GL X1 boards on key SPECviewperf 7.1.1, 3dsmax-02 and ProE-02 tests.

The launch of the card has been boosted by strong benchmark scores against rivals and deals with IBM and Hewlett Packard which will see the card bundled with workstations from both companies early in 2004.

The card will appear in the HP Workstation xw4100, xw6000 and HP xw8000, as well as in the IBM IntelliStation MPro and ZPro workstations.

"IBM has selected the nVidia Quadro FX 1100, based on its superior performance and for its ability to help propel our systems to a leadership position in the workstation market," said Matt Wineberg, product manager at IBM IntelliStation.

"Rock-solid partnerships with companies such as HP, IBM and PNY further underscore our continued drive to provide professionals with the gold standard in workstation graphics," said Jeff Brown, general manager of workstation product management at nVidia.

Targeted at graphics and engineering professionals in computer-aided design, digital content creation and scientific visualisation markets, the FX 1100 is based on nVidia's GeForce FX 5700 processor.

Manufactured using a 0.13 micron process, it features a 128-bit floating-point graphics pipeline, 12 bits of sub-pixel precision for high geometric accuracy, 128MB of graphics memory and third-generation vertex and pixel programmability.

European nVidia Quadro FX distributor and card manufacturer, PNY Technologies, has found demand is unusually high, despite its limited offer of free Conversion 2.1 software worth about £600.

Samy Benarfa, marketing director at PNY, said: "There has been a lot of interest so far. Usually it takes two weeks to a month for volume orders to arrive, but just a few days after the launch those orders are coming in.

"We should have availability in a few days and we doubt there will be any shortages."

Shipping now, the card is expected to retail for about £750.