AMD FirePro M6100 vs NVIDIA Quadro M3000M vs NVIDIA Quadro 4000M

AMD FirePro M6100

The AMD FirePro M6100 is an high-end graphics card for mobile workstations, which has been presented in mid-2013. Similar to the Nvidia Quadro series, the FirePro cards offer certified drivers for professional 3D-software like CAD. Due to optimizations and some unlocked features, the performance in these applications is much better compared to a consumer Radeon GPU.

Architecture

The FirePro M6100 integrates 14 Compute Units based on the GCN architecture. Therefore, the chip has 768 stream processors. The memory of up to 2 GB GDDR5 is connected via an 128-bit interface. Just like the Radeon series, the FirePro M6100 offers features like Eyefinity, Enduro or PCIe 3.0. Presumably, AMD uses a partially deactivated Bonaire graphics chip, but this has not yet been officially confirmed.

Performance

Thanks to the very high clock rate of up to 1100 MHz for the chip and 1500 MHz for the memory (6000 MHz effective, 96 GB/s), the 3D gaming performance is somewhat above the Nvidia Quadro K4100M or GeForce GTX 860M. Recent Games of 2014/2015 can thus be played fluently in medium to high details and full HD resolution.

Power Consumption

The FirePro M6100 features different energy saving techniques to reduce power consumption and prolong battery life. These include PowerPlay and PowerTune (for clocking the GPU), Zero Core (deactivates parts of the GPU when the display is off) and Enduro (dynamic GPU switching between the processor graphics and the dedicated Radeon GPU). However, the Fire Pro M6100 should still have a relatively high TDP (probably about 75 watts) and is only suited for large and well-cooled workstation notebooks from 15 to 17 inches.

NVIDIA Quadro M3000M

The Nvidia Quadro M3000M is a high-end, DirectX 12 (FL_12_1) and OpenGL 4.5-compatible graphics card for mobile workstations. It is a Maxwell-based GPU built on the GM204 chip with 1024 of the 1536 shader cores activated and is manufactured in 28 nm at TSMC. Therefore, the GPU is similar to the consumer Nvidia GeForce GTX 965M. The Quadro M3000M is built for the Intel Skylake generation and is a successor to the Quadro K3100M (Kepler-based). The M3000M usually comes with 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz effective, 160 GB/s opposed to 102.4 GB/s of the K5100M). 

The Quadro series offers certified drivers that are optimized for stability and performance in professional applications like CAD or DCC. OpenGL performance, for example, should be significantly better compared to GeForce graphics cards of similar specifications.

Performance

As the exact clock speed of the M3000M is still not known, we can only speculate on the performance of the card. However, it is the mid-range model of the mobile Quadro line in 2015 and based on the same chip as the GeForce GTX 965M. Therefore, it should be clearly faster than the old Quadro K3100M.

Using CUDA (Compute Capability 5.2) or OpenCL 1.2, the cores of the Quadro M3000M can be used for general calculations.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the Quadro M3000M is rated at the same TGP of 75 Watt as the K3100M (including the board and memory components). Therefore, the card is suited for large notebooks with 17-inch displays or greater and 25 Watt less than the M4000M and M5000M.

NVIDIA Quadro 4000M