NVIDIA Quadro Graphics Card Buyers Guide
What is an NVIDIA Quadro GPU / Graphics Card?
When it comes to a professional graphics workstation nothing is more important than knowing that what appears on-screen is accurate and colour correct. For these reasons we recommend artists, engineers and scientists choose a professional graphics card from the NVIDIA Quadro range.
NVIDIA is constantly updating its product range which could make it confusing to know if you’re buying the latest and greatest version.
The easiest way to tell is to look at what series the graphics card is, this essentially refers to the generation of that product which you’ll always find in the product description. Right now, the latest series of NVIDIA Quadro GPUs are based on the Turing architecture and known as the RTX series.
The NVIDIA Quadro hierarchy
The NVIDIA Quadro range of cards spans all the way from £100 to £10,000, with different models being optimised for running specific workflows such as CAD, CAM, BIM, visualisation and VR. To make the selection process a little easier to discern, we’ve split the various cards into entry-level, mid-range, high-end and ultra-high-end segments.
Quadro P400
NVIDIA’s most affordable Quadro graphics card is the P400. Based on the Pascal architecture, the P400 sports 256 CUDA cores plus 2GB of memory. Supporting three displays the P400 is a good choice for an entry-level workstation.
| Performance | 3 | |||||||||
Real Time Ray Tracing No
VR Ready No
Quadro P620
The next graphics card up in the NVIDIA Quadro range is the P620. Based on the Pascal architecture, the P620 sports 512 CUDA cores plus 2GB of memory. Supporting four displays the P620 is a great choice for an entry-level workstation.
| Performance | 4 | |||||||||
Real Time Ray Tracing No
VR Ready No
Quadro P1000
The first mid-range graphics card in the NVIDIA Quadro range is the P1000. Based on the Pascal architecture, the P1000 sports 640 CUDA cores plus 4GB of memory. Supporting four displays the P1000 is a great choice for a mid-range workstation.
| Performance | 5 | |||||||||
Real Time Ray Tracing No
VR Ready No
Quadro P2000
The other mid-range NVIDIA Quadro graphics card is the P2000. Based on the Pascal architecture, the P2000 sports 1024 CUDA cores plus 5GB of memory. Supporting four displays the P2000 is a good choice for a mid-range workstation.
| Performance | 6 | |||||||||
Real Time Ray Tracing No
VR Ready No
Quadro RTX 4000
The first high-end NVIDIA Quadro graphics card is the RTX 4000. Based on the Turing architecture which supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI, the RTX 4000 has a real edge over its predecessors based on older architectures such as Pascal. The RTX 4000 sports 2304 CUDA cores, 288 Tensor cores, 36 RT cores plus 8GB of memory. Supporting four displays the RTX 4000 is a great choice for a high-end workstation and is the most affordable Quadro card that is VR Ready.
| Performance | 7 | |||||||||
Real Time Ray Tracing Yes
VR Ready Yes
Quadro RTX 5000
The other high-end NVIDIA Quadro graphics card is the RTX 5000. Based on the Turing architecture which supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI, the RTX 5000 has a real edge over its predecessors based on older architectures such as Pascal. The RTX 5000 sports 3072 CUDA cores, 384 Tensor cores, 48 RT cores plus 16GB of memory. Supporting four displays the RTX 5000 is the premium card for a high-end workstation.
| Performance | 8 | |||||||||
Real Time Ray Tracing Yes
VR Ready Yes
Quadro RTX 6000
The first ultra-high-end NVIDIA Quadro graphics card is the RTX 6000. Based on the Turing architecture which supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI, the RTX 6000 has a real edge over its predecessors based on older architectures such as Pascal. The RTX 6000 sports 4608 CUDA cores, 576 Tensor cores, 72 RT cores plus 24GB of memory. Supporting four displays the RTX 6000 is an immensely powerful graphics card for ultra-high-end workstations.
| Performance | 9 | |||||||||
Real Time Ray Tracing Yes
VR Ready Yes
Quadro RTX 8000
The RTX 8000 is a special edition of the RTX 6000 with double the memory for handling extremely large datasets. Like the RTX 6000, the RTX 8000 is based on the Turing architecture which supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI, and so it is has 4608 CUDA cores, 576 Tensor cores, 72 RT cores. However, the memory has been doubled from 24 to 48GB. Supporting four displays the RTX 8000 is an immensely powerful graphics card for specialist workstations.
| Performance | 10 | |||||||||
Real Time Ray Tracing Yes
VR Ready Yes
Quadro GP100
The GP100 is an ultra-high-end Quadro card based on the older Pascal architecture. Armed with 3584 CUDA cores and 16GB of ultra-high bandwidth HBM2 memory the GP100 is optimised for specialist applications that require a high level of precision at FP64 (double precision). Supporting four displays the GP100 is an immensely powerful graphics card for specialist workstations.
| Performance | 10 | |||||||||
Real Time Ray Tracing No
VR Ready Yes
Quadro GV100
Like the GP100 the GV100 is optimised for specialist applications that require a high level of precision at FP64 (double precision). Compared to the GP100 the GV100 is based on the more recent Volta architecture, and is equipped with 5120 CUDA cores and 640 Tensor cores. It also has double the memory of the GP100, being armed with 32 rather than 16GB of HBM2 memory. Supporting four displays the GV100 is the ultimate graphics card for FP64 operations.
| Performance | 10 | |||||||||
Real Time Ray Tracing No
VR Ready Yes
NVIDIA GPU Summary
Still not sure which NVIDIA Quadro graphics card is right for you? This table shows the relatively performance of all the models and shows which cards support Real Time Ray Tracing and are VR Ready.
| P400 | P620 | P1000 | P2000 | RTX 4000 | RTX 5000 | RTX 6000 | RTX 8000 | GP100 | GV100 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Performance | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Real Time Ray Tracing | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| VR Ready | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
We hope you’ve found this buyers guide helpful. Don’t hesitate to speak to one of our friendly advisors for more advice if you still have questions on how to select the perfect graphics card for your needs.
