NVIDIA just cranked up its highest-end Quadro graphics cards a notch or two, rolling out three products, the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600, Quadro FX 5600, and NVIDIA Quadro Plex VCS Model IV that the company says represents the biggest leap in performance for its graphics cards yet. One giant leap indeed, because these parallel processing monsters have the rough equivalent of 128 1.35GHz processors cranking away at graphics in a whole new way. These cards have more circuitry than ever, with three quarters of a billion transistors on board, and NVIDIA says not only can they display larger graphics faster than ever but use a concept called GP-GPU, allowing general-purpose programs to run on the GPU instead of the CPU.

Sharing some of the same technology with NVIDIA's GeForce 8 series of consumer cards released last November, these cards are aimed at high-end film effects artists and oil and gas explorers, and maybe a few absolutely fanatic gamers.

Meanwhile, these graphics cards aren't cheap, where the Quadro FX 4600 will retail for $1995, and the Quadro FX 5600 will run $2999. NVIDIA didn't say what its highest-end Quadro Plex VCS model IV will cost.