NVIDIA Quadro NVS 290

We'll start with the baby of the new Quadro family first of all. NVS 290, based on NVIDIA G86, is a $149 product designed to let you add extra D3D10-class displays to a workstation system, at low power and with a low board profile.

There are two NVS 290s, one with a PCI Express x16 interface, one with a PCI Express x1 interface (both PCI Express Gen1), and both pair the G86 with 256MiB of DDR2. Maximum board power is a low 21W, and the DMS-59 connector splits out into two single-link DVI ports via supplied cable.

You can see the low-profile PCB, and it's feasible for the NVS 290 to be outfitted with a low-profile backplane too, should you be adding them to a smaller system. The G86 GPU and memories only require passive cooling, and the sinks are single slot.

The NVS 290 is the first Quadro product to be available with a PCI Express x1 connector, and should appeal to users looking to add one or two hardware-accelerated heads to their system, at low cost. Passive cooling means they'll add add nothing to a system's noise profile, and there's no limit to the number of them you can add to a system, provided you have the spare slots.

Clocks aren't mentioned, but then we doubt they really matter to the target audience. There's some scope for them being used as cheap CUDA AIBs for testing, where the ultimate performance profile might matter, and we're sure NVIDIA will disclose the clock frequencies if you ask nicely.

NVS 290 is announced today for volume availability in October, and partners are in the last throes of qualification and integration into systems. We can see the NVS 290 being popular in financial houses with day traders and the like, where there's always a requirement for extra accelerated heads. At $149, there's no barrier to entry there.