NVIDIA Quadro NVS 420 GPU brings powerhouse graphics to SFF rigs

[Marthaz]

NVIDIA's Quadro NVS 420 is quite the unique offering -- on one hand, it's rather intriguing that a workstation card has been whittled down to fit within a small form factor PC, but then again, who else outside of advertisers (and their digital signage applications) will even need it? Nevertheless, said card is the industry's only low-profile professional GPU that can sneak within SFF PCs and still power four 30-inch displays at 2,560 x 1,600 resolution via DisplayPort / dual-link DVI.
As for specs, it's boasting 512MB of memory, 11.2GB/sec (per GPU) of memory bandwidth and a CUDA Parallel Computing Processor.

[Eldon]

On the sidelines of the new GeForce ads that follow and are very similar, the range includes many Quadro graphics chips dedicated to professionals who meet the diverse needs and varied. The NVIDIA Quadro NVS 420 announced today is intended for his part in the compact work stations which can connect up to four high-definition screens.

The graphics card is why two graphics chips. Each of them has 8 stream processors and 256 MB of memory to 64 bit for a bandwidth of 11.2 GB per second, or a total of 16 stream processors and 512 MB of memory to 128 bit. Although it is compatible with the latest 3D rendering technologies, including DirectX 10, OpenGL 2.1 and Shader Model 4.0, this map is not intended to video games in 3D.

It has, however, four sorties DisplayPort or DVI Dual Link which can connect as many screens 30 inches each displaying 2560 x 1600 pixels, for a total display area of 16.4 million pixels. It is therefore particularly suited to traders, billboard advertising or any other activity requiring a large display area. In comparison, a screen Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) shows that 2 million pixels.

It also supports the technology of parallel computing (GPGPU) CUDA. This technology allows for reminders to take advantage of the effectiveness of graphics cards for massively parallel computations, such as video encoding or simulations of various phenomena. It builds on the architecture this multi-heart (16 in this case) graphics cards, far more appropriate than that of processor (CPU), the best quad-core. In the workplace, parallel computing is used for scientific, creative aided, architecture or the industry.

The NVIDIA Quadro NVS 420 is expected in February at the retail price of $ 500.