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.

Well, hiddy ho Dell Precision M6400, nice to finally meet you all retail-like. The 17-inch (LED back-lit 1,920 x 1,200 pixels covering 100% of the RGB color gamut) Mobile Workstation capable of playing host to 16GB of memory, a Core 2 Duo Quad Core Extreme processor, and up to 1TB of data (2x 500GB disks in RAID 0 or RAID 1 configs) is now up on Dell's website. Other specs include up to 1GB of NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M Graphics, Bluetooth 2.1, Ultra-wideband, WWAN, GPS, 802.11a/g/n WiFi, stereo speakers and dual-array mic, 8-in-1 card reader, ExpressCard 54 and PCMCIA slots, Firewire, 4x USB 2.0, DisplayPort, eSATA, and more. All that in a 15.4 x 11.0 x 1.35-inch chassis weighing 8.5-pounds with a biggie 9-cell battery. The only thing missing is Blu-ray and that shuttle controller spotted in the teaser video. Starts at $2,599 with an October 22nd ship date.

Update: Ah, we get it: the track pad "works like a jog shuttle" -- it's not a physically distinct device. See it pictured after the break.

[Thanks, M.Luczak]

NVIDIA's really pushing the GPU-as-CPU angle at SIGGRAPH this year -- we've already seen the PhysX and CUDA-powered GeForce Power Pack for consumers, and the company is also updating the Quadro Plex series of visual co-processors for workstation customers. The new Quadro Plex 2200 D2, designed for large datasets and models, crunches data through two Quadro FX 5800 GPUs (totalling 480 CUDA cores) and 8GB of RAM, while the Quadro Plex 2100 D2 is optimized for large multidisplay rigs with four Quadro FX 4700 GPUs and support for up to eight monitors. Sounds fun -- and we're guessing the people who can justify the $10,500 starting price for these rigs think so too.

Not that these units are a complete surprise or anything, but HP's taking the time to get really, really official with its minty fresh EliteBooks. Up first is the beastly EliteBook 8730w (that's the 6830s pictured), which packs a 17-inch DreamColor display, a quad-core Intel CPU, 8GB of RAM and one of NVIDIA's 1GB Quadro FX graphics cards. Keeping things going are the EliteBook 8530w and 8530p, both of which boast a 15.4-inch display, 8GB of RAM, a Core 2 Duo chip (8530w supports optional quad-core) and HP's own brushed anodized aluminum DuraCase. As for pricing and release information? Good luck on the guessing.

[Thanks, Christopher]

Some five months after NVIDIA took the Saran Wrap off of its professional-oriented Quadro FX 3600M, along comes Alienware patting itself on the back. Why? Because its Area-51 m15x is the first 15.4-inch laptop on planet Earth to offer said card, giving users who practically live in CAD, DCC or other visualization applications an option to still look 1337 (and tap into the occasional 3D game) on their lappie. Unfortunately, such graphical prowess will add $600 to the cost of your rig over the standard 256MB GeForce 8600M GT, but no one ever said that dancing on the cutting edge was cheap.

Desktop gamers weren't the only ones scoring a little love from NVIDIA today -- the company also rolled out the Quadro FX 3600M laptop graphics GPU, which it says provides professional workstation-level performance on the road. The CUDA-capable chip is designed to be mounted on a standard mobile graphics board, and the stock configuration sports 512MB of RAM, power-management features, and a 256-bit memory interface that opens up 51.2GB/s of graphic memory bandwidth. Sadly, there's no word on price, but the first machine out the gate with the new GPU will be the 17-inch HP Compaq 8710w, which currently runs in the $2,500 - $3,000 range.

For AV freaks enamored with their own HDTV and hardcore gamers who doubt anyone's ability to unleash more graphical firepower than that found in their rig, prepare to be humbled. As part of the HIPerSpace visualization system, engineers at the University of California, San Diego "have constructed the highest-resolution computer display in the world, with a screen resolution of up to 220 million pixels." The system, which links between UCSD and UC-Irvine (responsible for the mighty HiPerWall) via dedicated optical networking, contains a "graphics super cluster" that relies on 80 NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 GPUs. Reportedly, scientists dealing with large-scale applications involving "Earth sciences, climate prediction, biomedical engineering, genomics, and brain imaging" will be able to make use of the newfangled setup in order to better digest the information they're dealing with. Sheesh, all we want is a solid day with this thing, infinite Doritos, and Halo 3.

[Via MedGadget]

Yeah, we all agreed that the Quadro Plex 1000 was hot stuff in its heyday, but NVIDIA's latest GPU server blows away prior iterations by cramming four Quadro FX 5600s into a 1U enclosure. The Quadro Plex VCS Server packs a "record number" of GPUs into a 1U form factor, and its 6GB frame buffer (1.5GB per GPU) and mind-boggling computational abilities should please those interested in remote graphics / offline rendering. Additionally, it's built to "dynamically allocate compute, geometry, shading, and pixel processing power for optimized GPU performance," and while there's no mention of a price, those actually in the market for this beast probably aren't concerned.

[Via MacsimumNews]

NVIDIA's been dancing around the general-purpose processor market for a while now -- we've heard reports that the company is developing an x86 chip, and it bought PortalPlayer last year for $357 million. Well, at this year's Microprocessor Forum the company took another small step by announcing that the final release of CUDA, its framework for utilizing high-end NVIDIA GPUs as CPUs, which will be available to developers in the second half of the year. While the idea of using a GPU as a secondary high-performance processor isn't a new one -- Folding@Home already runs on NVIDIA and ATI chips, and the Peakstream system already leverages GPUs -- CUDA should make it easier for developers to tap into high-performance graphics devices whenever they're available, without having to specifically tailor their apps to do so. CUDA, which stands for "compute unifed device architecture," currently only supports the GeForce 8800 and 8600 and Quadro FX 4600 and 5600, so it's of limited appeal right now, but here's hoping the next gen of NVIDIA chips supports CUDA from the get-go -- the Engadget Folding@Home team is looking for a few new recruits.

Maybe Nvidia's recent tough talk following the acquisition of ATI wasn't just talk. They're backing up those words with some serious graphics muscle: a unit called the Quadro Plex 1000 that can pump 80 billion pixels per second for pro graphics needs. Like, really pro graphics needs. Before we hurt ourselves trying to figure just exactly how many Marios that is, we'll run the rest of the specs by you. The Quadro Plex comes in a desktop (pictured) or 3U rackmount configuration, and is designed for working with 12-megapixel HD video, 3D graphics, scientific visualization, simulations and whatever else needs that type of GPU power. One node involves eight Quadro FX cards, jammed into two Plex 1000 systems and paired up via SLI, all of which is hosted by a 32-bit Intel or 64-bit AMD machine running Windows or Linux. All that juicy Quake II power (we keed! we keed!) can be yours starting at a mere $17,500, and should be available beginning next month.