NVIDIA today brought its Fermi graphics architecture to the Mac at last by launching the Quadro 4000 for Mac. The workstation-class video supports the same features as its Windows counterpart and focuses heavily on general-purpose computing. It gives a lift to OpenCL in Snow Leopard and can greatly accelerate apps that are using NVIDIA's own CUDA language as well, such as video processing in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.
General performance also goes up compared to through a rendering engine that handles as many as 890 million triangles per second, the inclusion of 2GB of video RAM and a 256-bit memory bus that gives about 89.6GB per second of bandwidth. Dual-link DVI and a stereo 3D port are the main connections, but NVIDIA has unusually decided to equip the 4000 with a full-size DisplayPort and bundles an adapter to plug into a Mini DisplayPort screen.
The card will be available directly from the Apple Store later this month for $1,199 but will also be available through some resellers and the companies making the cards in different countries, such as PNY in the Americas and Europe, ELSA in Japan and Leadtek in Asia-Pacific. Using the card needs a Mac Pro from early 2008 or later as well as Mac OS X 10.6.5 or later.
The card will be available directly from the Apple Store later this month for $1,199 but will also be available through some resellers and the companies making the cards in different countries, such as PNY in the Americas and Europe, ELSA in Japan and Leadtek in Asia-Pacific. Using the card needs a Mac Pro from early 2008 or later as well as Mac OS X 10.6.5 or later.
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