NVIDIA Quadro FX 570

Quadro FX 570 is the workhorse of the new Quadro products, with NVIDIA billing it as an entry-level professional graphics product with uncompromised features. At $199, the Quadro FX 570 is powered by NVIDIA G84 again, and comes with the same 256MiB of DDR2 as the Quadro FX 370.

Quadro FX 570 definitely uses G84 in full 128-bit configuration for the connection to external memory, and the clock speeds for the GPU are likely close to those on a GeForce 8500 GT.

Max board power is 38W, reflecting the increase in clock frequencies, and the output options are improved on what Quadro FX 370 provides. Both ports are able to drive dual-link DVI digital panels without issue, and the PCB design and cooler are identical.

In fact, looking at the Quadro FX 370 and 570 reference pictures, you'd be hard pushed to tell the two apart without closer inspection. The $199 price reflects the increased performance versus Quadro FX 370, and NVIDIA are confident that the $199 Quadro FX 570 outperforms the existing ~$450 Quadro FX 1500 (G71-based) in vertex-heavy workloads.

We think the Quadro FX 570 is likely to be the most popular Quadro in this new generation in terms of volume sales, despite the doubling in price over the $99 Quadro FX 370, simply because of its performance relative to the older FX 1500. Those levels of extra vertex-heavy performance versus a $400+ board should make that happen.

For 38W maximum board power, too, we think volume professional workstation vendors should jump on the Quadro FX 570 to replace their existing Quadro-based system designs.

There are a number of extra common features that the 570 shares with the 370 (and NVS 290) that we haven't mentioned yet, including HDCP support for protected display outputs, the G8-series architecture's native 10-bit display pipe, and much improved readback performance versus the outgoing G7-based generation. We have a test designed to stress the latter as soon as we get samples for testing.

It has a x16-wide PCI Express slot interface, which we'll talk about in a bit more depth soon, and like the others, it's announced today for shipping in volume in October.