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NVIDIA's Quadro GV100 GPU will power its ray tracing tech

But no, it's not for your gaming machine.

Last week, NVIDIA unveiled its RTX real-time ray tracing technology at GDC. It has the potential to change the way artists and developers work in 3D, by letting them quickly render realistic scenes. The only downside? It was meant for video cards the company still hasn't launched yet. At its GPU Technology Conference (GTC), NVIDIA announced the first GPU that can power RTX, the Quadro GV100. Like the recent $3,000 Titan V, it's a powerhouse card built on the company's next-generation Volta architecture.

Under the hood, the GV100 features 7.4 teraflops of power for double-precision rendering (which helps to avoid errors), 14.8 teraflops for single-precision and 118.5 teraflops for deep learning. In comparison, the last high-end Quadro, the GP100, sported 10.3 teraflops for single-precision rendering. The GV100 comes with 32GB of memory, but you can also use NVIDIA's NVLINK technology to pair it with another card for 64GB.

While the GV100 isn't meant for consumers, it's a big step towards bringing NVIDIA's Volta architecture towards more mainstream cards. And it'll be fascinating to see how artists adopt the company's RTX technology. It'll let them create scenes that would previously take hours of rendering work (that's why we distinguish pre-rendered CG from in-engine graphics). The company says major studios like Disney and Industrial Light and Magic are already onboard with RTX. It's the sort of thing that could help avoid rendering flubs, like what we saw in Black Panther.

We have no idea how much the Quadro GV100 will cost yet, but as a measuring guide, the GP100 GPU sold for $7,000. You won't be buying this just to play PUBG. NVIDIA says the GV100 will be available in April.