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NVIDIA debuts new slew of Quadro mobile GPUs, each sporting Optimus for battery life too
It seems only yesterday we were imagining ourselves building virtual worlds on the fly with NVIDIA's latest Fermi-based Quadro, and here comes an even faster chip to make that vision all the more enticing. NVIDIA's Quadro 5010M shares the same 100W thermal profile as its predecessor, but adds more bang for the watt, with 384 CUDA cores (up from 320) and a full 4GB of GDDR5 memory dedicated to rendering what dreams might come. You'll also NVIDIA's Optimus tech to automatically turn off as much of that battery-draining silicon as possible when not in use, though we imagine that most mobile workstations will still find themselves chained to a plug. No word on per-unit pricing as of yet, but the 5010M proves too rich for your blood, perhaps the 4000M, 3000M, 2000M and 1000M detailed in the press release below will prove useful for your graphical niche.
HP crams Fermi-based Quadro 5000M GPU inside 17-inch EliteBook
Gotta live up to the name, right HP? NVIDIA's new pro graphics solution for mobile creatives, the Quadro 5000M, was unsheathed only yesterday but HP appears to have been first in line to get some of that new 40nm goodness. Electronista reports that the world leader in PC shipments is readying a 5000M solution for its 8740w EliteBook, which will bring 320 CUDA cores and a jumbo 2GB of dedicated memory to the party. That comes replete with the latest DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1 compatibility, naturally, as well as a bunch of pro-friendly computational enhancements. Dell's also going to be offering a 5000M-equipped rig, but lest you get too excited, bear in mind that getting the current best Quadro-equipped 17-incher from HP costs north of $3,000, so affordability is clearly not a priority here. Skip past the break for NVIDIA's joyous press release announcing the new Quadro chips.
ATI FirePro V8800 takes Cypress core into workstation woods, emerges victorious
ATI has just let loose the first professional tier card based on its Cypress XT core, which in itself is part of the company's highly successful Evergreen series of 40nm chips. Boasting 2GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1.15GHz, 1,600 stream processors and an 825MHz core clock speed, the FirePro V8800 is very much an HD 5870 adapted to the demands of the digital creation world, and as such it's no surprise that it also requires the same pair of 6-pin auxiliary power connectors. It also supports DirectX 11 and the fresh new OpenGL 4.0 standard, something those business crazies seem to appreciate, but its killer feature is most probably the price, which -- although steep by common standards -- is $300 less than the $1,800 FirePro V8750 predecessor. Oh, and this card can drive 4 simultaneous displays, but we're kinda used to that by now with ATI -- the real question is how this pup ranks relative to its forebears and NVIDIA competition. The answer, according to the commonly used Maya, SolidWorks and 3ds Max applications, is that the FirePro V8800 simply destroys the V8750 while also generally outpacing the aging Quadro FX 4800. Feels pretty nice to have a straightforward conclusion, doesn't it? Check out the links below for the full disclosure.
HP EliteBook 8740w specs begin to take shape, ATI FirePro M7820 revealed
You've been wondering, we know, why the newly unveiled 2540p and 2740p EliteBooks from HP weren't accompanied by their heavyweight compadre, the 8740w, but as it turns out the latter might be taking a bit longer to launch due to its inclusion of ATI's as yet unannounced FirePro M7820 GPU. Joining up with the earlier leaked M5800, this is likely to form the backbone of ATI's pro graphics refresh, with its innards based on the successful HD 5870, meaning it offers DirectX 11 functionality, 1GB of GDDR5 memory, and probably the most graphical horsepower your lap has ever seen. This is aided by the low-voltage, but highly potent Core i7-720QM CPU and four DDR3 slots for up to 16GB of RAM on the 8740w. You have until the end of the month to figure out what to do with all that power, which is when the rumormongers expect this machine to be announced. [Thanks, Reznov]
ATI and NVIDIA's high-end workstation graphics get tested and compared
They may not have quite the broad appeal of the companies more gaming graphics cards, but ATI and NVIDIA's relatively recent FireGL V8650 and QuadroFX 5600 workstation graphics cards still have no shortage potential users, and an old-fashioned shootout between the two $1,000+ cards is hard to ignore. That spectacle comes courtesy of the folks at HotHardware, who loaded up each card in a suitably high-end system and put 'em through the usual array of benchmarks and tests. After all that was said and done, they gave the edge ever so slightly to the NVIDIA card, although they say it's "not completely cut and dry" as to what the absolute best option is. Working the ATI's favor, however, is its lower MSRP (despite having more memory than the NVIDIA) and its top of the line Maya performance, although it fell short of the NVIDIA in overall Open GL and Direct 3D performance. If that's not enough to sway you one way or the other, you can hit up the link below for the complete blow by blow benchmark action.
