Nvidia Takes Fermi to Entry-Level Professionals

Fermi for work.

Nvidia's Fermi transformation is nearly complete, as this week it is expanding to both retail shelves and now into the entry-level professional space.

The company debuted two new Quadro products based on Fermi – the mid-range Quadro 2000 with 192 CUDA processing cores and the entry-level Quadro 600 with 96 CUDA processor cores.

Nvidia says that the Quadro 2000 delivers 1.5 times the geometry performance of the previous Quadro GPU in the mid-range. Helping the performance boost is Scalable Geometry Engine technology that helps CAD and DCC applications such as SolidWorks and Autodesk 3ds Max.

At a considerably lower cost, the Quadro 600 is a half height, energy efficient card that'll accelerate Autodesk AutoCAD 2011 to handle models that are twice the size and complexity compared to the previous entry-level card.

Both the Quadro 2000 and Quadro 600 feature 1GB of graphics memory and are compatible with the new 3D Vision Pro active shutter-glasses solution, providing the option for the third-dimension, or Avatar.

Since both cards will be used in work settings, both the Quadro 2000 and Quadro 600 feature an "ultra-quiet" design.

The Quadro 2000 is priced at $599 and Quadro 600 is at  $199, both available now.