Nvidia today launched the Quadro4, a graphics chip family designed to improve its standing in the low to mid-end workstation business.

The company is positioning Quadro4 toe-to-toe against ATI's new FireGL8800 and 3Dlabs' new Wildcat 6110 and 6210 ranges. "We believe that Quadro4 will beat both of these product lines hands down in both raw performance, application performance and price/performance..." a representative told us,"...as you'd expect," he added somewhat endearingly.

Nvidia has signed up a trio of top-drawer customers for Quadro 4, namely Compaq, IBM and HP. A bevy of North American system builders are also namechecked on the partner press release. (You want their names? Then check them out here.) Quadro 4 cards should be in retail channels and incorporated into OEM products by next month.

The Quadro 4 family is segmented into two product lines, the five-strong Quadro 4 GXL series and two members of Quadro 4NVS, a multi-display technology.

You can read more specs here. At time of writing Nvidia has not published indicative pricing for Quadro4 boards. ®

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