At SIGGRAPH 2014 in Vancouver, Nvidia unveiled its next generation of Quadro cards. The new lineup features a boost in GPU power as well as memory increases across the line; most of the new cards have double the memory of their predecessors.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | GPU | CUDA Cores | Memory | Memory Bandwidth | Memory Interface | Max Power Consumption |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quadro K5200 | GK110 | 2304 | 8 GB | 192 GBps | 256-bit | 150w |
| Quadro K4200 | GK104 | 1344 | 4 GB | 173 GBps | 256-bit | 105w |
| Quadro K2200 | GM107 | 640 | 4 GB | 80 GBps | 128-bit | 68w |
| Quadro K620 | GM107 | 384 | 2 GB | 29 GBps | 128-bit | 45w |
| Quadro K420 | GK107 | 192 | 1 GB | 29 GBps | 128-bit | 41w |
The GK110 moves down to the 5x00 series and the GK104 (previously in the Quadro K5000) moves down to the 4x00 series. The 2x00 and 6x0 cards see the introduction of the Maxwell chips into the Quadro lineup. It also means these lower-end cards will show significantly lower power usage than most of the other Quadro cards. Like the Maxwell consumer cards, the Maxwell-based Quadro cards are single-slot designs with no PCIe power connector. The K4200 is also a single-slot card.
According to Jeff Brown, Vice President of Professional Visualizatiion at Nvidia, "The next generation of Quadro GPUs not only dramatically increases graphics and compute performance to handle huge data sets. It extends the concept of visual computing from a graphics card in a workstation to a connected environment." He added, "The new Quadro lineup lets users interact with their designs or data locally on a workstation, remotely on a mobile device or in tandem with cloud‐based services."
In referring to remote use on mobile devices, Nvidia is partly referring to the GRID servers and their fully GPU-enabled remote desktop capability. The same remote desktop capability of the GRID cards is apparently in these newer Quadros and can be used in a VNC server to give remote access to any workstation.
The new Quadro GPUs enable users to:
- Use data sets up to twice the size of previous-generation cards.
- Remotely use Quadro-equipped workstations, including graphically rich applications from PCs, tablets and Macs.
- Run professional applications up to 40 percent faster than previous-generation cards.
- Switch between local GPU rendering and cloud-based rendering when using iRay.
Pricing and Availablity
Pricing for the new cards is expected to be in line with the cards they are replacing with availability expected later this fall.
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