I won’t get into the details here, mainly because if you’re in the graphics business you’re going to be doing a lengthy examination of these suckers on your own. But I think it’s good to note that the Quadro line (not meant for gaming, it should be noted) comes in flavors running from the $150 380 to the $3500 (!) 5800, and everything in-between. So if you’re not Pixar but you do need to do a lot of rendering for your Poser art gallery, there’s something for you in there.

More information is available at Nvidia’s site.

Here’s the full press release:

NEW NVIDIA QUADRO SOLUTIONS HIGHLIGHT DECADE OF PROFESSIONAL GRAPHICS INNOVATION

Most Advanced Visualization Solutions Maximize Productivity and Capability for All Professionals

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—March 25, 2009—Whether designing the next aircraft or delivering seven-day weather forecasts, today’s professionals seek a reliable, robust visualization platform designed to address their unique challenges and needs. Highlighting a decade of innovation that match the exact needs of professionals, NVIDIA today introduced its most powerful and advanced top-to-bottom line of Quadro® professional GPU solutions available to date.

“It’s been an incredible ride for Quadro over the last ten years,” said Dan Vivoli, vice president of professional marketing, NVIDIA. “When we started Quadro, it was just a single graphics board, now ten years later we’ve evolved to offer a complete line of top-to-bottom solutions and have delivered on some amazing world’s firsts, like the GPU blade server, and now our new SLI Multi-OS technology that lets two engineers share a single workstation. We work closely with our customers, to make sure we deliver solutions that have immediate impact, and that’s what sets us apart from the competition.”

Based on the company’s revolutionary CUDA™ parallel computing architecture, this new series provides high-performance visualization and new capabilities to solve highly complex challenges such as: real-time ray tracing, video encoding and interactive volume rendering. These new solutions also contain added graphics memory, double precision support and advanced display capabilities, giving professionals the right features to move beyond visualization barriers, reducing time-to-insight.

This line-up also brings the introduction of NVIDIA® SLI® Multi-OS, a ground-breaking technology that enables, for the first time, 3D workstation virtualization of the Quadro GPU. With SLI Multi-OS, applications and users are able to optimize productivity and costs through the use of multiple Quadro GPU technologies from a single workstation in a virtualized environment. Users can also enable native SLI technology support on key partner platforms to accelerate application performance, scaling and higher image quality. Spanning from sub $100 entry-level to standalone visual computing systems, this new series includes:

· NVIDIA Quadro FX 5800 – ultra high-end solution delivers the highest visualization performance and capabilities currently available in workstation graphics, giving professionals the ability to work with large-scale models and datasets with ease. MSRP of USD $3,499.

· NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 – ultra high-end solution provides professionals with the right toolset to dramatically push the boundaries of realism, performance and quality. MSRP of USD $1,999.

· NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800 – high-end, single slot solution with a robust feature set and added capabilities such as SLI Multi-OS and SDI support (capabilities also available on Quadro FX 4800, and Quadro FX 5800) to enable a no-compromise, high-performance, interactive visualization experience. MSRP of USD $1,199.

· NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800 – mid-range solution offers the best price performance for workstation graphics, and provides the optimal blend of quality, precision, performance and programmability for all professional 3D applications. MSRP of USD $699.

· NVIDIA Quadro FX 580 – best-in-class entry-level solution boosts productivity for a variety of industry-leading volume CAD and digital content applications. MSRP of USD $199.

· NVIDIA Quadro FX 380 – an affordable professional-class graphics solution extends energy efficiency while delivering 50-percent faster performance. MSRP of USD $149.

· The Quadro NVS 295 – capable of supporting up to two 30-inch digital displays at resolutions of up to 2560 x 1600 to move business graphics to a new level of visual perfection. MSRP of USD $159.

“Once again, NVIDIA has set new graphics performance standards for professionals in the product design and development community,” said Laurent Laloy, Director, 3DVIA User Experience, Dassault Systèmes. “This latest generation of Quadro professional solutions will allow our customers to drive innovation and design with unprecedented 3D visual quality.”

Availability

NVIDIA Quadro solutions are widely available through leading system manufacturers such as Dell, Fujistu-Siemens, HP and Lenovo; leading workstation system integrators; and NVIDIA channel partners PNY Technologies (US and EMEA), Leadtek (APAC) and Elsa (Japan). For additional information about the complete lineup of NVIDIA Quadro professional solutions, please visit: www.nvidia.com/quadro.

In an effort to facilitate ticket purchasing, SNCF — France’s public rail system — will commence a 1,000 user trial of its Weneo smart card system this Fall. Riders will be able to purchase tickets with the small USB dongles at turnstiles via RFID. Once the balance is depleted, users can refill their accounts by plugging the devices into a computer, whereby they’re transported to the SNCF’s online hub. Since only the rider’s account number is stored in the RFID portion of the smart card, this system allows commuters hassle-free ticket purchasing, all while keeping important information privy from hackers – information that some RFID devices seem to have problems keeping secret. If all goes well, SNCF expects to expand the use of Weneo nationwide by 2010.[Via Wired]

Consequences of the slow changeover could be particularly dire with claimed failure rates as high as the “teens” for the 8800 GT and higher still for the 9600 GT, according to the claim.

NVIDIA has publicly maintained that the issue is limited to a handful of notebook processors but has been caught understating the nature of the issue in the past, at first saying only HP was affected but was ultimately forced to recognize the

Surprise! NVIDIA has officially unleashed its new GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260 graphics cards. The GTX 280, NVIDIA’s flagship model, is reportedly 50% faster than last year’s 9800 GX2 when in its overclocked AMP! Edition, and it is loaded with around twice as many transistors as the 9800. The new single-chip processor packs some serious number crunching, such as a 142 GB/s memory bandwidth with a 512-bit memory interface. Other final specs look to include 1GB GDDR3 memory, two Dual Link DVI connectors, and, of course, an overclocked chipset. In short, it’s the fastest graphics card you can get. Don’t go nuts just yet, though — the GTX280 with 1GB of RAM will run you a cool $649. The lower-end GTX 260 with 896MB is a more palatable $399. GTX280 availability starts tomorrow, and GTX 260s will hit the streets on June 26. And to finally put this joke to rest: Yes, they will run Crysis.

[Via CNET]

So, your cable company stuck you with one of those boring, no-frills Scientific Atlanta DVR boxes. We feel your pain, but you don’t have to just take it lying down. Iomega’s new DVR Expander offers up 500GB of extra storage over eSATA for compatible Scientific Atlanta boxen. That’s about 300 hours of SD TV, or 60 hours of HD. Using those incredibly intuitive SA menus it shouldn’t be too hard to stumble through configuration and get this thing added on to your setup, and there’s even an eSATA cable included to start things off on the right foot, but it’s not like there’s anything going on here other than a fairly standard-issue eSATA drive. Right now the drive is compatible with the 8300 DVR and the 8300HD DVR, but future models from Scientific Atlanta will be compatible as well. DVR Expander should be available this month for about $200.

We know you’ve been sitting on your hands since January, waiting for Samsung to ship this SpinPoint M6 500GB, 9.5mm laptop drive wonder. That whole “released in France” thing was just rubbing it in your face, and we apologize, but it looks like your wait is finally over: OWC’s Woot! shop has the drive for sale as of now. You can’t buy one sans enclosure, but the $310 USB 2.0 + eSATA version or the $350 FireWire 800 / 400 + USB 2.0 version (there’s also a $320 model) should prove useful in housing an old 2.5-inch drive, or perhaps an ant farm.

[Thanks, Dan C.]

WWDC is an annual event organized by Apple where the company showcases and launches some of their upcoming products but the main focus is to provide developers with technical information about Apple products and devices.

The conference will start with opening keynote by Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) and then will proceed accordingly.

Rumors say that Steve will be revealing some new products during the time-span of the conference (June 9 to June 13). However nothing is confirm as of now. The new Apple products we are more likely to witness are:

• iTablet (some tablet device by Apple)
• 3G iPhone (new model of iPhone featuring 3G and GPS)
• Mac OS X 10.6 (the new version of Apple’s renowned Mac OS)
• iChat for Windows (Apple’s chat software ported to Windows)
• iPhone and iPod Touch firmware 2.0

Plus there will be talks on the iPhone SDK and lot of more exciting stuff. As predicted, it will be one great event just like all other Apple events.

I will be covering new Apple product launches and other WWDC 2008 here on Sizlopedia so stay tuned.

Viruses and malware use this method to propagate. When an infected USB drive is plugged into the system, the malware automatically starts up using the auto-run of the drive. This way the malware spreads very quickly.

Today I found out a neat utility which can write protect your USB drive. This comes in handy when you have a virus in your system and you have some fixing tools in your USB drive. You just write protect the USB drive, plug it in and then use the tools on it. In this way, your USB drive will not be affected by any kind of additional viruses which are on the infected system where you plugged in the USB drive.

The name of the utility is Thumbscrew. It sits in system try from where you can enable or disable the write protect function of the USB drive.

USB Write Enabled

USB Write Disabled

Download Thumbscrew (233 KB)

It only makes sense to go all expensive on the things you look at most often, like your TV, car, or — in this case — your keyboard. For only (!!) $155, you too can get a handmade Nishi-Ki USB keyboard. Yours is sure to be the object of typist envy cube farm-wide. Nishi-ki keyboards pack 86 keys and work via USB or PS/2 interfaces. Sorry, Mac users, no Command keys.

[Via BoingBoing]