Hardware companies are jumping on Autodesk’s “Autodesk University” program, underway this week, to announce new hardware certified for use with Autodesk products. First up was NVidia:
Optimized and certified for AutoCAD, 3ds Max and other Autodesk software, the new offerings include:
NVIDIA® Quadro FX 380 LP low profile entry-level graphics solution
- The most affordable and flexible Quadro professional graphics solution, with an MSRP of $169 (USD), is perfect for design professionals moving from 2D to 3D
- Best-in-class performance increases productivity with up to a 10X acceleration in AutoCAD 2009 versus consumer graphics cards
- 512 MB of graphics memory enables designers, animators, architects and engineers to create and interact with more complex models and scenes while increasing visual quality
- Low profile design easily fits into small form factor desktop system
- EnergyStar compliant, ultra-low 28W maximum power consumption
- Meets stringent performance and reliability requirements for business critical applications
NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800M and Quadro FX 2800M mobile workstation solution
- Ideal for demanding design professionals on the go
- Delivers the highest level of graphics performance in the new Dell Precision M6500 17-inch mobile workstation
- Features up to 128 CUDA™ cores for massively parallel computational graphics
- Delivers 30-bit color accuracy for display of over one billion colors
- 1 GB dedicated graphics memory enables efficient manipulation of larger data sets in graphics-intensive 3D applications, such as Autodesk Revit Architecture, Inventor and Moldflow
- Combines high-performance graphics with high-performance computation to enable real-time ray tracing, interactive volume rendering, and the fastest video encoding available in a mobile workstation
- PowerMizer® 9.0 intelligent power management technology for extended battery life while maintaining optimal performance
Then AMD joined in with their announcement:
AMD today announced that all of its ATI FirePro graphics accelerators have been certified by Autodesk for AutoCAD 2010 on Windows 7, and the ATI FirePro V5700, V7750, V8700, V8750 cards have been certified for Autodesk Showcase 2010 R1. Adding to the ever-growing list of more than 90 certifications for the AMD professional line of graphics accelerators, AMD is also certified for use with these Autodesk applications:
- 3dsMax
- AliasStudio
- Inventor
- ImageModeler
- Maya
- MotionBuilder
- Mudbox
- SoftImage
- Toxik
The continued certification of ATI FirePro graphics accelerators by software application vendors assures engineers, designers and animators that the ATI FirePro line delivers a stable and high performance workstation graphics environment, thereby creating the highest level of reliability that professionals need.
Both companies are at Autodesk University demonstrating the systems in their booths. I don’t believe the hardware itself is anything new, but the certifications mean you’ll be able to get it in a better variety of high-end dedicated graphics workstations like those provided by BOXX.
