NVIDIA Quadro M1000M vs AMD FirePro M5100 vs NVIDIA Quadro 1000M

NVIDIA Quadro M1000M

The 28nm NVIDIA Quadro M1000M is a mid-range DirectX 12 (FL 11_0) and OpenGL 4.5-compatible graphics card for mobile workstations. It is a 1st generation Maxwell-based GPU built on the GM107 architecture with 512 of the 640 shader cores activated. Therefore, the GPU is not similar to any current consumer card. The Geforce GTX 950M, for example, uses the full 640 shader cores. The Quadro M1000M is built for the Intel Skylake generation as the successor to the Kepler-based Quadro K1100M. The M1000M typically comes with 2 GB GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz effective at 80 GB/s compared to 44.8 GB/s on the K1100M). 

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 M1000M is still not known, we can only speculate on the performance of the card. However, it is a lower mid-range model from the mobile Quadro line in 2015. It should be slower than the GTX 950M in 3D gaming due to the lower shader count, but should easily outperform the old Quadro K1100M.

Using CUDA (Compute Capability 5.0) or OpenCL 1.2, the cores of the Quadro M1000M can be used for general calculations.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the Quadro M1000M is rated for a 40 Watt TGP including the board and memory components, which is 5 Watt lower than the K1100M. Therefore, the card is suited for 15-inch notebooks and greater.

AMD FirePro M5100

The AMD FirePro M5100 is a middle-class 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. Except for the certified drivers, the M5100 is more or less identical to the Radeon HD 8870M.

Architecture

The FirePro M5100 integrates 10 Compute Units based on the GCN architecture. Overall, the chip has 640 stream processors, 40 TMUs and 16 ROPs. The memory of up to 2 GB GDDR5 is connected via an 128-bit interface. Just like the Radeon series, the FirePro M5100 offers features like Eyefinity, Enduro or PCIe 3.0. Presumably, AMD uses the Cape Verde graphics chip, but this has not yet been officially confirmed.

Performance

According to the clock rates of up to 775 MHz for the chip and 1125 MHz for the memory (4500 MHz effective, 72 GB/s), the 3D gaming performance will be slightly above the Nvidia Quadro K2100M or GeForce GT 750M with GDDR5 memory. Recent Games of 2014/2015 can thus be played fluently in medium to high details and a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels.

Power Consumption

The FirePro M5100 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). The maximum power consumption under full load should be about 50 watts (estimate), making the card suitable for laptops 15 inches in size or greater.

NVIDIA Quadro 1000M