NVIDIA Announces New Lineup of Kepler-Based Quadro Graphics Cards
NVIDIA has announced four new Kepler-based Quadro professional graphics cards aimed at the volume market versus the specialist one that is targeted by the high-end Quadro K5000 card. Read on to uncover the technical details of these new Quadro graphics cards!
NVIDIA has announced four new Kepler-based Quadro professional graphics cards aimed at the volume market versus the specialist one that is targeted by the high-end Quadro K5000 card. The four new cards are the Quadro K600, K2000, K2000D and K4000. The Quadro K2000D is a variant of the K2000 that supports Dual DVI with a pair of such connectors as well as a Mini DisplayPort.
(Image Source: NVIDIA)
With the release of these four new professional graphics cards, NVIDIA aims to flesh out the entire Kepler-based Quadro stack, with the high-end Quadro K5000 at the top, with the new cards targeting the volume market of professional users.
Besides expanding the range of cards, the 2nd generation of its workstation platform, NVIDIA Maximus, has been updated to support these new cards. This means that the announced cards can be paired with a Tesla K20 GPU. The Maximus set of software and drivers is able to transparently and automatically assign visualization, simulation or rendering work to the right GPU.
New Quadro Cards Lineup
The Kepler-based Quadro graphics cards targeted at the working class of professionals includes:-
NVIDIA Quadro K4000
NVIDIA Quadro K4000 (Image Source: NVIDIA)
The NVIDIA Quadro K4000 is a high-end card, in a single-slot format, that is suitable for graphics-intensive computing requirements. With 3GB of video memory and support for up to four video displays, this card is a viable alternative to the top-end Quadro K5000.
NVIDIA Quadro K2000/K2000D
NVIDIA Quadro K2000 (Image Source: NVIDIA)
This mid-range card sports 2GB of onboard memory, coupled with its 128-bit memory bus width, makes it suited for a broad range of applications. This card also has a variant in the form of the Quadro K2000D that supports two dual-link DVI display connectors for interfacing with ultra-high-resolution medical imaging displays.
NVIDIA Quadro K2000D (Image Source: NVIDIA)
NVIDIA Quadro K600
NVIDIA Quadro K600 (Image Source: NVIDIA)
This low-profile, entry-level offering from NVIDIA has been certified to work with a wide range of professional applications. It sports 1GB of onboard memory and has support for up to two video displays.
Main Objectives of the New Quadro Range of Cards
The new range of Quadro cards aims to maximize performance with a broad range of application suites that are used extensively in the manufacturing and electrical industries. These cards are certified and guaranteed to work over 200 such applications, as well as to accelerate their performance by leveraging on the new features of the Kepler GPU in terms of its support for bindless textures, its SMX architecture that sports more CUDA cores, and its dedicated H.264 encoder.
The new Kepler Quadro family of cards. (Image Source: NVIDIA)
Enhanced Visual Workspace
The cards support up to four displays to expand the workspace of the professional user with compromising image quality due to their support for cinematic-quality visual output with FXAA/TXAA with DisplayPort 1.2. The cards also feature NVIDIA nView for desktop management.
Reliable Performance; Cost-Effective Performance
The cards have been tested for reliability with hardware vendors and coupled with NVIDIA support for new driver releases, the professional users can be assured of reliable performance of their hardware investments in the form of these new Quadro cards. As a matter of fact, NVIDIA has claimed the exponential gains experienced from investing in the higher-end Quadro cards like the K4000 and K5000.
The orange line graphs show the exponential gains in the tests scores against the cost of ownership of the cards. (Image Source: NVIDIA)
Keeping Up with Industry Trends
The company aims to keep up with trends in the manufacturing field as well as the media and entertainment industry. In the former, designers and engineers drive the need for more powerful graphics processors due to their need to share product prototypes, resulting in the growing adoption of application suites that require the compute prowess of these professional graphics chips.
(Source: NVIDIA)
In the media and entertainment industry, one of the main challenges is to keep the cost of content creation down while keeping up with the industry's need for 4K and High Frame Rate (HFR) video content.
(Image Source: NVIDIA)
According to NVIDIA, the application support for Kepler-based Quadro cards covers a broad range of CAD applications that include CATIA, AutoCAD, and Inventor; while on the media and entertainment front, these cards support over 25 applications including Adobe, Avid, Sony Vegas.
The creation of such high-definition content on both manufacturing and entertainment fronts will naturally drive the need and adoption of 4K and 8K display technology in the near future and NVIDIA aims to consolidate its hold on these fronts with its expanded Kepler-based Quadro graphics cards. From 05 March, these graphics cards are expected to be available from workstation OEMs including HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Fujitsu, together with systems integrators such as BOXX Technologies and Supermicro.
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