Nvidia Brings Maxwell GPUs To New Quadro M5000 and M4000
Nvidia has released two Maxwell-based Quadro graphics cards - the M5000 and M4000. The Quadro M5000 is a dual-slot card that packs 8GB of RAM and 2,048 shader processors, while the M6000 is equipped with 12GB and 3,072 shader processors. Its memory bus is 256 bits wide, and a total of 211 GB/s of bandwidth is available. The M5000 also has ECC RAM support allowing for error correction on the DRAM, four DisplayPort 1.2 outputs as is one dual-link DVI port.
The single-slot Quadro M4000 has 8GB of VRAM on a 256-bit bus, 1,664 shader processors, and it also lacks the higher-end models' ECC RAM support. Although it is not equipped with a DVI port, it retains four DisplayPort connectors. The slim cooler and 120W TDP could be a good fit for smaller workstations.
The cards also suport 10-bit color output, SLI, multiple-GPU frame synchronization with Quadro Sync, and GPUDirect data transfer acceleration.
As is usually the case for NVIDIA, the company is not publishing any official prices for these cards, leaving pricing up to their partners and vendors. Expect pricing to be similar to the Quadro K5200 and K4200, which would put street prices on the cards at around $2000 and $1000 for the M5000 and M4000 respectively.
| Quadro M5000 | Quadro M4000 | |
| CUDA Cores | 2048 | 1664 |
| Boost Clock | ~1050MHz | ~780MHz |
| Memory Clock | 6.6GHz GDDR5 | 6GHz GDDR5 |
| Memory Bus Width | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| VRAM | 8GB | 8GB |
| FP64 | 1/32 | 1/32 |
| TDP | 150W | 120W |
| GPU | unknown | GM204 |
| Architecture | Maxwell 2 | Maxwell 2 |
| Size | Double-Slot | Single-Slot |
| 4Kp60 Displays Supported | 4 | 4 |
DesignWorks Launches
Along with the release of their latest Quadro cards, NVIDIA announced a new software suite at SIGGRAPH: DesignWorks. The latest Works project, DesignWorks, is partially a collection of new software and partially a branding exercise for the company. NVIDIA is collecting most of their tools and libraries for professional graphics development under the DesignWorks brand, and going forward will be releasing new tools under this brand as well.
The announcement of DesignWorks also marks the introduction of some new tools for NVIDIA. Of particular note here is NVIDIA vMaterials, a library of digitized, real world materials for use in applications that can interface with NVIDIA’s Material Design Language, MDL. Also premiering with DesignWorks is a version of NVIDIA’s VR technology optimized specifically for professional use, aptly named DesignWorks VR.
NVIDIA’s technology focus for the DesignWorks launch is on Physically Based Rendering (PBR), a realistic rendering technique the company has been promoting for much of the last year now. PBR is designed to offer more photo-realistic results by focusing on simulating the properties of the materials of the surrounding world itself.
