NVIDIA Quadro M2000M vs NVIDIA Quadro K610M

NVIDIA Quadro M2000M

The 28 nm Nvidia Quadro M2000M is a mid-range DirectX 12 (FL 11_0) and OpenGL 4.5-compatible graphics card for mobile workstations. It is a (first generation) Maxwell-based GPU built on the GM07 chip with 640 shader cores. Therefore, the GPU is similar to the consumer Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M or 950M. The Quadro M2000M is built for the Intel Skylake generation and is the successor to the Kepler-based Quadro K2100M. The M2000M typically comes with 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz effective at 80 GB/s compared to 48 GB/s on the K2100M). 

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 M2000M is still not known, we can only speculate on the performance of the card. However, we do know that it is a mid-range model from the mobile 2015 Quadro line based on the same chip as the GeForce GTX 960M or 950M. Therefore, it should be faster than the old Quadro K2100M.

Using CUDA (Compute Capability 5.0) or OpenCL 1.2, the cores of the Quadro M2000M can be used for general calculations.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the Quadro M2000M is rated for the same TGP of 55 Watt as the K2100M, including the board and memory components. Therefore, the card is suited for 15-inch notebooks and larger.

NVIDIA Quadro K610M

The NVIDIA Quadro K610M is a DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.3 compatible graphics card for mobile workstations. It is a Kepler-based GPU built on the GK107 chip with 192 out of 384 shader cores activated and is manufactured in 28nm at TSMC. The Quadro K610M is built for the Intel Shark Bay generation (Haswell) and is a successor to the Quadro K500M (Chief River platform). As a new feature, PCIe 3.0 is supported for the first time. The K610M usually comes with 1 GB GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 650 MHz (2600 MHz effective, 20.8 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 GK107 Kepler core offers two shader blocks, called SMX, that are clocked at the same speed as the central core. In the K610M, only one block is active leading to the 192 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 K500M (which has only DDR3 memory) and similar to the consumer GeForce GT 720M. However, most demanding games of 2013 will run fluently only in low detail settings.

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. Please note: The K610M does not supprt 3D Vision Pro.

Using CUDA or OpenCL 1.2, the cores of the Quadro K610M can be used for general calculations.

The 5th generation PureVideo HD video processor (VP5) is also integrated in the GK107 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.

The power consumption of the Quadro K610M is rated at a TGP of 30 W including the board and memory components. Therefore, the card is suited for medium-sized notebooks with 15-inch displays or greater.