

(Image courtesy of Engadget)
Mac Pro users are all about kicking things up a notch -- after all, they’re the last current Mac available with expansion ports, so why not take advantage of them? If you want to truly go nuts, NVIDIA now has a graphics card just for you.
Engadget is reporting that NVIDIA has released the Quadro 4000, a graphics card packing the latest Fermi architecture and just about anything else a Mac Pro user could want, including 256 CUDA processing cores and 2GB of fast GDDR5 memory, which promise to deliver exceptional graphics performance across a broad range of design, animation and video applications.
“The NVIDIA Quadro 4000 graphics processing unit (GPU) for Mac is optimized to accelerate workflows and drive a range of top professional applications,” promises the company’s press release. “For example, the Adobe Mercury Playback Engine in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 software leverages NVIDIA CUDA parallel processing technology to enable film and video professionals to work unconstrained. Other examples include visual effects and image processing applications from The Foundry, including NUKE and STORM, and MATLAB from MathWorks.”
Requiring Mac OS X 10.6.5 or later, the Quadro 4000 GPU for Mac also provides additional display flexibility through a DisplayPort and a DVI-I (Dual Link) connector built into its bracket. Additionally, users can enable up to four high resolution displays from a single Mac Pro using dual NVIDIA Quadro 4000 for Mac boards. The card works with Mac Pro models manufactured between early 2008 and mid-2010.
Of course, this kind of luxury comes at a price, and in this case it’s $1,199 SRP versus the same PC-compatible card which rings up at around $700. But Mac users are used to paying a premium… right?
The Quadro 4000 for Mac will be available this month at Apple.com, select Apple resellers and other NVIDIA authorized partners.
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