The NVIDIA Quadro K4100M is a high-end, DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.3 compatible graphics card for mobile workstations. It is a Kepler-based GPU built on the GK104 chip with 1152 out of 1536 shader cores active and is manufactured in 28nm at TSMC. The Quadro K4100M is built for the Intel Shark Bay generation (Haswell) and is a successor to the Quadro K4000M (Chief River platform). As a new feature, PCIe 3.0 is supported for the first time. The K4100M usually comes with 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 800 MHz (3200 MHz effective, 102.4 GB/s).
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 than with GeForce graphics cards of similar specifications.
Architecture
The Kepler architecture is the successor to the Fermi architecture that first appeared in laptops with the GeForce 400M series. The GK104 Kepler core offers eight shader blocks, called SMX, that are clocked at the same speed as the central core. In the K4100M, 6 of 8 blocks are active leading to the 1152 CUDA cores. Although more shader cores are available in the Kepler architecture as compared to the Fermi design, the Kepler shaders are still expected to be up to twice as power efficient. However, due to the missing hot clock of the shader domain, two shaders of a Kepler chip offer similar performance to just one shader of a Fermi chip (as the latter is clocked twice as fast).
Performance
The performance is clearly above the old Quadro K4000M and similar to the Quadro K5000M. In 3D games, the K4100M offers a performance slightly above the consumer GeForce GTX 770M. Therefore, most demanding games of 2013 will run fluently with maxed out details.
Features
The improved feature set now includes support for up to 4 active displays. Furthermore, high resolution monitors of up to 3840 x 2160 pixels can now be connected using DisplayPort 1.2 or HDMI 1.4a if available. HD-Audio codecs, such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD, can be transmitted via bitstream mode through the HDMI port. However, as most laptops will feature Optimus, the integrated GPU will likely have direct control over the display ports and may limit the feature set available by the Nvidia Kepler cards.
Using CUDA or OpenCL 1.2, the cores of the Quadro K4100M can be used for general calculations.
The 5th generation PureVideo HD video processor (VP5) is also integrated in the GK104 core and offers hardware decoding of HD videos. Common codecs such as MPEG-1/2, MPEG-4 ASP, H.264 and VC1/WMV9 are fully supported up to 4K resolutions while VC1 and MPEG-4 are supported up to 1080p. Two streams can be decoded in parallel for features such as Picture-in-Picture. Another novelty is the inclusion of a dedicated video encoding engine similar to Intel QuickSync that can be accessed by the NVENC API.
Power Consumption
The power consumption of the Quadro K4100M is rated at a TGP of 100 W including the board and memory components. Therefore, the card is only suited for large notebooks with 17-inch displays or greater.
The Nvidia Quadro M4000M 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 all 1280 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 970M. The Quadro M4000M is built for the Intel Skylake generation and is a successor to the Quadro K4100M (Kepler-based). The M4000M 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 K4100M).
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
The clock speeds of the Quadro M4000M are very similar to the GTX 970M based on the same chip. The base clock is slightly higher with 975 versus 924 MHz but the Boost speed is lower at 1013 versus 1038 MHz. Therefore, with good cooling the GTX 970M should be slightly faster. Compared to the Quadro line-up, it is the second fastest Quadro card in 2015 and therefore clearly faster than the old Quadro K4100M.
Using CUDA (Compute Capability 5.2) or OpenCL 1.2, the cores of the Quadro M4000M can be used for general calculations.
Power Consumption
The power consumption of the Quadro M4000M is rated at the same TGP of 100 Watt as the M5000M and older K5100M/K4100M (including the board and memory components). Therefore, the card is suited for large notebooks with 17-inch displays or greater.
Average Benchmarks NVIDIA Quadro K4100M → 100%n=26
Average Benchmarks NVIDIA Quadro M4000M → 175%n=26
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card * Smaller numbers mean a higher performance 1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
Game Benchmarks
The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailed information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.