NVIDIA's Quadro FX 5800 with 4GB graphics memory is 'the most powerful graphics card in history'

That's some serious boasting by NVIDIA, but this is some serious graphics horsepower. The Quadro FX 5800, already seen in NVIDIA's Quadro Plex D data cruncher, replaces the 5600 at the top of the NVIDIA heap with 240 CUDA-programmable parallel cores and the industry's first card with 4GB of graphics memory. MSRP? Just $3,499 for you big spender -- pennies for the companies who can harness the power for the purposes of oil and gas exploration, 4D modeling, and graphics design.

[Laughing Man @ Nov 18th 2008 12:53PM]

The only way your graphics memory affects your total system memory is if it is integrated. A dedicated card has its own memory and its own memory controller completely independent of your CPU memory address controller.

I can't believe you people low ranked me for telling the truth. So you guys either need to pick up a book and read, or stop playing games on your piss weak ass laptops with your integrated Intel G3100 and upgrade to a real PC.

[Laughing Man @ Nov 18th 2008 7:35PM]

How your CPU sees your GPU's memory and an explaination of how it is actually addressed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOMMU

As you can clearly read, the CPU's memory controller is for address RAM memory, the only memory it has direct access to besides its caches. THe IOMMU handles the device addressing.

[ZaxCG2 @ Nov 10th 2008 8:36AM]

I can has in my next computer build? :3

[Malachi @ Nov 10th 2008 8:43AM]

That thing has more on-board memory than my whole computer... Not to mention the card alone also costs almost 10 times more than it also.

[Shinigami @ Nov 10th 2008 9:10AM]

Netbooks are not real computers...

[Samboini @ Nov 10th 2008 2:04PM]

Yes they are.

[inteller @ Nov 10th 2008 9:06AM]

Oil and gas exploration? everybody knows that Exxon already knows where all the oil is, they are just sitting on it. They just buy cards like this to play Unreal Tournament while the money rolls in.

[phil @ Nov 10th 2008 5:55PM]

No.

We are not doing this.

[chAaDd @ Nov 10th 2008 9:38AM]

4gb!!! IMBA... bet it could run mario all by itself. LOL

[Sham @ Nov 10th 2008 10:10AM]

In the end, all of it will end up somewhere in China. e-waste.

[Arnold @ Nov 10th 2008 11:48AM]

wow, emo much?

[ran @ Nov 10th 2008 12:45PM]

Should help with Open CL and exponentially increase video encoding performance.

[Andrew @ Nov 10th 2008 1:16PM]

The 4GB of RAM wouldn't do anything at all in terms of gaming performance, even if this was a gaming oriented card. Games today don't need 4GB of RAM, there's no way that you will need to buffer that much data with the current state of in-game graphics.

This is a professional card, and nVidia is doing a good job of getting a lot of PR with it. Saying they have the fastest card (even if it's only a professional card) piques the interest of gamers and enthusiasts, even though there's no way that it would be useful or practical for gaming.

[Brian @ Nov 10th 2008 1:41PM]

"the most powerful graphics card in history"

Don't you mean for the next 4 months?

[Jimiisama @ Nov 10th 2008 2:25PM]

And by the next 4 months they'll have a new one.

[stereobot @ Nov 10th 2008 2:01PM]

Yeah, but how many frame rates can you get with the highest video settings on in Crysis?

[Jimiisama @ Nov 10th 2008 2:26PM]

We've seen this joke 3 or 4 times in this one article.

[gonintendo @ Nov 10th 2008 5:09PM]

1 framerate per monitor. Do you mean what frame rate?

[eakius @ Nov 10th 2008 2:18PM]

i hope they know to have a 64 bit OS lulz.

[aznofazns @ Nov 10th 2008 5:03PM]

psh my 4mb Geforce 2 Go could give this fat s.o.b. a lickin'

[霽月瀛台 @ Nov 10th 2008 10:24PM]

It is a capital goods.

[Tony D @ Nov 11th 2008 1:43AM]

wow

[Driftingnfsc3 @ Nov 11th 2008 4:35PM]

-___- *sigh* i wanna get atleast 1 for my graphic design!! but the money...better start saving up!!! =P
for all you people sayying how this card won't be the best for long, i wouldn't think like that...when nvidia says best, that means they aren't releasing anything better until someone releases a better car...that's where ati's fire pro 8700 (with a quarter of the ram XD) comes in!!

for the other stupid people who are asking questions about games, shutup and get a gtx280. the quadro is a workstation card meant for quality work that takes time!! it's high precision to make stuff like commercials and games that you gamers play. those car commercials are done with these kind of graphic cards, ON COMPUTER ONLY! (quite impressive actually =P) gaming card is just taking information and rendering them roughly. gaming cards are about fps of low quality 3d models and renderings... go look at an audi r8 commercial...that was ALL done with quadro workstation cards in a rendering farm...

[Driftingnfsc3 @ Nov 11th 2008 4:43PM]

forgot to add, the ram on the graphic card has nothing to do with anything, but the gpu!! it's only the gpu that has direct connection. that ram is only for storing those calculations that make up the frames on your screen.

[Bob @ Nov 12th 2008 4:50AM]

And textures, scenes, models, shaders, and the cup holder/cigarette lighter combo... and it'd still have room to eat my soul.

For the things this card is designed to be used for, that much vRAM might really be needed at times. But without a core/memory clock fast enough, that much vRAM could slow the memory operations and create a bottleneck. 102GB/s on 2GB is about twice as fast as 102GB/s on 4GB. Less stuff to access over the same bus. Wait, 102GB/s -> 4GB. Whoa...

[Nick @ Nov 11th 2008 4:56PM]

Who still has a 32-bit OS? I didn't think people still used that?

[Richard @ Nov 19th 2008 10:14PM]

Windows XP was the first Microsoft OS to have a 64bit version. I only mention MS because it is the mainstream. Linux, Apple and the derivatives have had 64bit OSes for many years past.

[Neil @ Dec 22nd 2008 3:58AM]

How did they run the Sparc64 then?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC

A mate of mine had the thing for ages, running FreeBSD, way before AMD got serous with 64 bit.

[secondfromtheleft @ Nov 22nd 2008 10:22AM]

Laughing Man - I have a Quadro FX 1700 512mb DDR2 I purchased recently for my Precision 370 box. My box has 4GB of ram installed with win2k3 32bit OS. Actual RAM identified 3.34 BEFORE installing the FX 1700. Installed it came out to 2.25 available. I did not know what it was at first. BIOS recognized my 4gb but the OS refused, so I took an old hard drive and built XP-32bit on it. Same results, 2.25gb. I removed the card and put in a basic PCI graphics card and voila, 3.34 available was back. I double checked the specs on nvidia website to ensure my card had its own 512mb which it does.
I am posting just my experience which leads me to believe in what RobertMfromLI states above.