NVIDIA Releases 4GB Quadro FX 5800

Last month, NVIDIA unveiled a special Quadro model, CX, which was designed with Adobe's latest CS4 suite in mind. One that offers the perfect blend of speed and features to give all of what professionals will need while sitting at their desk. Today, the company announced a new Quadro model that targets a slightly different crowd. One that has far more complex tasks to take care of.

The 4GB FX 5800 is designed with some mind-boggling calculations in mind, with prospective customers including those from the gas and oil industry, medical imaging, 4D interactive modeling, scientific visualization, et cetera. Sadly, like the other Quadro cards, NVIDIA deliberately omits certain pieces of information about the card on their website, but we can assume that GDDR3 is being used here, which offers 102GB/s of bandwidth.

That bandwidth is a little strange given the sheer amount of memory being used, and when you consider that the GTX 280 is featured as having 141.7GB/s of bandwidth potential. So it appears in these specific industries, it's not so much the memory speed that matters, but simply how much of it is there to take. So, how much will 4GB cost you? Not surprisingly, it's priced right along with what you'd expect to see hardware cost in these industries... $3,499. This might just be the most expensive Quadro to date.

"The size and complexity of data is growing at an exponential rate. The challenge for today's professional is to make sense of the mountain of data by distilling it into a form they can comprehend, analyze and use to make impactful decisions," said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions, NVIDIA. "At stake can be billions of investment dollars, or even people's lives.

Source: NVIDIA Quadro FX 5800 Product Page

Palit Introduces Three-Slot Graphics Card

Remember when the first dual-slot GPUs came out? I'm not certain, but I believe it could have been the NVIDIA 6800 Ultra. The dual-slot likeness didn't matter too much though, as the card was powerful enough to earn those two spots. That's still the case today, and given that the latest GPUs can run upwards of 80°C with relative ease (especially ATI's HD 4000 series), dual coolers are an actual necessity.

Well, how about taking things to the next level? By next level, I mean by creating a triple-slot GPU! That's right. Palit's upcoming Revolution 700, based on the HD 4870 X2, takes up three slots in your PC thanks to it's extremely bulky cooler. As this card can run extremely hot during full load though, the reason behind this is obvious.

The cooler itself seems pretty similar to Palit's own HD 4870 Sonic we reviewed last month, except it's a lot more solid here. The cooler still uses a dual-fan design, and includes a multitude of thin fins throughout the entire bottom, with most of the "free space" appearing between the fans themselves and the fins (there seems to be a slight gap). Oddly enough, this card doesn't come pre-overclocked, except on the memory, but I'm willing to bet it's going to keep the card much, much cooler than one with the reference cooler design.

The company just announced its Revolution 700 Deluxe, which runs on two 750 MHz GPUs like the 4870 X2 reference design, but offers 2 GB of GDDR5 memory that runs at 3800 MHz instead of 3600 MHz. There are two PWM fans as well as four heat pipes to cool the entire package, which comes in a 3-slot design.

Source: TG Daily

Tech Roundup - November 10, 2008

Motherboards & Processors
• Intel i7 Extreme 965 - TweakNews

Displays & Video Cards
• AMD HD4550 versus GeForce 9400GT - Bjorn3D
• ECS Hydra 9800 GTX+ - t-break
• Palit 9800GTX+ - Pro-Clockers
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 - Benchmark Review
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 - Big Bruin
• Sparkle GeForce 9500GT 1GB - Phoronix

Peripherals & Gadgets
• Linksys WRT150N-RM Wireless-N Router - Think Computers
• Razer Moray Gaming Headphones - i4u
• Samsung Bluetooth Stereo Headset YA-BH270 - PC Stats
• Sennheiser VMX 100 Bluetooth Headset - Hardware Logic

Cooling
• Arctic Cooling Accelero TWIN TURO - Bjorn3D
• Cooler Master NotePal X1 Notebook Cooler - InsideHW
• Nexus BeamAir 120mm Fan Airflow Straightener - FrostyTech
• Thermaltake RamOrb Active Memory Cooler - Think Computers
• TITAN Cool Idol CPU-Cooler - Technic3D
• Vantec AeroFlow FX 120 CPU Cooler - DragonSteelMods

Chassis & Power Supplies
• NZXT Guardian 921 - Bjorn3D
• Zalman GS1000 Professional Full-Tower Enclosure - PC Perspective

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• Samsung T10 MP3 Player - Overclockers Online