Nvidia targets professional users

Nvidia's Quadro FX 5800 packs 4G bytes and 240 graphics processor cores, but the US$3,500 graphics board isn't designed for gamers.

The Quadro FX 5800 is designed for professional users that want to tap the parallel processing power of graphics chips to crunch massive amounts of data without overloading the microprocessor inside a computer.

With 102G bytes per second of memory bandwidth, the board has a fill rate of 52 billion texture elements (texels) per second and can draw 300 million triangles per second, Nvidia said.

Designed for use in financial modeling, medical imaging, and exploration for oil and gas, among other industries, the Quadro FX5800 's 240 processor cores can be programmed using Nvidia's Cuda C-language development environment and tools.

Quadro FX 5800 boards are currently available from PNY Technologies in the U.S. and Europe, Elsa in Japan, and Leadtek in the rest of Asia.