Graphics-card maker Nvidia has announced the Quadro GP100, a slot-in card that is specifically geared for those who want to render 3D to a graphics file, rather than display 3D graphics on screen. It has 16GB of HBM2 memory which helps load 3D model and scene textures “significantly faster”, which should reduce rendering times. It’ll need a PCI-Express 3.0 slot on your PC motherboard. No price yet but industry pros are suggesting it will cost 20-30% more than the current-fastest card the P6000 (“$5,000”), which puts it at perhaps $6,500. Far too high for many, but possible for a small professional studio looking for a purchase they can write off against tax. And for amateurs, there’s the comfort that what is $6,500 today is often $1,200 or less in three years time.
And if you happen to also want to create a new cyber-AI, the GP100 also being touted as the ideal card from which to build your own AI and “explore deep learning”.