NVIDIA's Quadro4 Preview: Threatening the Competition

Final Words

Since this is just a preview we can't give you much of a conclusion but there are some interesting things NVIDIA is trying with the Quadro4 that we'd like to address.

First and foremost, although the Quadro4 is largely the same as the GeForce4 it's clear that NVIDIA wants to distance its professional brand from its desktop name. What this means is that going forward we will begin to see many more workstation-specific features implemented in the GL parts that would have normally not been considered because of die space constraints on the desktop side.

Pricing continues to be a huge win for NVIDIA when compared to their chief perceived competition in the professional 3D market. Competing cards from 3DLabs are priced in the thousands while even the Quadro4 900 XGL is priced at roughly 50% of the top of the line Wildcat. From what NVIDIA is claiming they will continue to offer higher performance even at these lower price points. With continued pressure from NVIDIA, 3DLabs may be forced to either speed up development of their parts or think about dropping prices. While there are still some areas where 3DLabs cards hold advantages over the Quadro line (for example, in subpixel precision which is useful in determining rendering accuracy), with every year that goes by NVIDIA's Quadro line becomes even more workstation specific and thus even more competitive.

NVIDIA's naming debacle continues even in the Quadro world with the difference between the NV17GL based Quadro4 500 and the NV25GL based Quadro4 700 being downplayed by the slight difference in product names. Luckily the lack of programmable pixel shader support in the Quadro4 500/550 XGL isn't as disappointing as it is on the desktop side.

This is the first time since NVIDIA started building up steam in the graphics market that they have singled out a market that Matrox has dominated in. Matrox has in the past been driven from the desktop graphics market segment and thus found a comfortable home in supplying the 2D workstation, business and video editing markets. With the Quadro4 NVS line being priced virtually on par with Matrox's G450/G200 MMS cards it won't be smooth sailing for Matrox any longer. It's amazing that Matrox has been able to sustain this long on the same 3-year old graphics architecture that they introduced with the G400, but with NVIDIA actively pursuing some of their core markets it's time for Matrox to get back in the game otherwise they may see that market share slip away.

We'll provide you with a more thorough look at the performance of the Quadro4 and how it stacks up to the competition in a forthcoming professional graphics card roundup but for now we hope this introductory preview will suffice. NVIDIA is definitely spicing things up in the workstation market and it seems like they have every intention to dominate in that market much like they do in the desktop world.