• nVIDIA Quadro4 980 XGL...
• • ServerSupply.com
  • $330.00

The flagship of the new QuadroFX series is the 2000 model. NVIDIA forecasts a street price of $1400/ €1650. The QuadroFX chip runs at 400 MHz. The memory speed is just as fast, even if the marketing bigwigs hawk it as 800 MHz. Physically, however, the true figure is 400 MHz. From this, we can calculate the memory bandwidth:

128 bits / 8 bits/Byte * 400 MHz * 2 transfers/speed = 12.8 gigabytes/second

The card takes up two slots in a PC system. We don't see this as a drawback, since on a conventional motherboard you couldn't use the first PCI slot beside the AGP slot anyway. There are two DVI-I jacks on the slot cover to enable dual-monitor operation. You can chose between analog displays and digital models. A VGA adapter for analog screens is supplied. A connector for 3D glasses sits between the two DVI jacks.

The card takes up two slots because the heat sink is so tall. In contrast to the GeForceFX, the cooling system does without the "FX Flow" unit.

NVIDIA provides additional power with the same connector used in drives (in the picture above, a hard drive is used as an example).