Nvidia Rolls Out New AGP 8X Quadro4 Workstation Boards

Nvidia announced three new AGP 8X workstation-class graphics boards in its Quadro4 XGL family. Based on Intel's AGP 3.0 spec, the new boards include the Quadro4 980 XGL, the Quadro4 580 XGL and the Quadro4 380 XGL. Nvidia says that the application performance improvements will be substantial for the data-hungry applications that animators use, since the data throughput between the processor and the graphics board has increased from 1.0 to 2.1 GB per second. Like the other boards in the Quadro4 XGL family, these new products all support hardware overlay planes, hardware line antialiasing, two-sided lighting, full-scene antialiasing, 2nd-generation occlusion culling, LMA II, and 2048x1536 per display. The standout feature for the new boards is the AGP 8X support. The new Quadro4 8X-enabled products will be available from Leadtek, PNY Technologies and Technology Joint Corporation/ELSA Japan (in their respective geographies). Check with those vendors for pricing.