Nvidia unveils integrated Quadros

NOT EVERYONE CAN afford to splash out on a costly Quadro. So Nvidia has come up with an option that may just stretch to poorer punters’ price limits, with its first workstation-class integrated motherboard GPU, the Quadro FX 470.

The firm also unveiled the Quadro FX 370, an entry-level, low profile graphics card for smaller workstations.

The Green Goblin reckons that its new, lower-cost alternative to expensive discrete Quadros, still packs a graphical punch of high performance for computer-aided design (CAD) and digital content creation (DCC) apps, like those from Autodesk and Adobe, for instance.

Both Quadros come with a 128-bit precision graphics pipeline, 32-bit floating point precision, full-scene anti-aliasing, advanced colour compression and early z-culling - pixel elimination based on depth.

Asustek said it was offering the FX 470 in its TW100-E5 iQuadro workstation, with GM of Asus's server business unit, Tom Lin, gushing the integrated chipset was, “a landmark achievement for professional graphics”.

Lin went on to say it was an, “entirely new way to get the performance advantages of a Quadro GPU at entry-level pricing,” and reckoned the CAD and design communities would eagerly embrace it.

Nvidia was staying quiet about how much the FX 470 would actually cost, other than to say it was aimed at systems sold for less than $700.

Nvidia did mention a price for the FX 370 LP, however, boasting it would cost only $149 and would give punters a quiet life, thanks to its fanless cooling. µ