"The GPU maker didn't provide core and memory clock frequencies, but it did say the Quadro FX 5800 card's memory bus has a 102GB/s bandwidth - just under 33 per cent more than the previous range topper, 2007's Quadro FX 5600, delivered.

The 5800 features true 10-bit color, enabling billions rather than millions of color variations for "rich, vivid image quality with the broadest dynamic range", Nvidia claimed.

The 5800 can fill 52bn texels every second with those colours and calculate the geometries of 300m triangles a second too. The 5600 can handle that many triangles in the same time period, but bits fill rate is a 'mere' 19.2bn texels per second.

By contrast, Nvidia's gaming oriented GeForce GTX 280 has a fill rate of 48.2bn texels per second, but a memory bandwidth of 141.7GB/s. It only comes with a gigabyte of GDDR 3, though. Mind you, you can pick one up for $410 - rather less than Nvidia wants for the 5800."