NVIDIA Quadro P3000 Max-Q vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M vs NVIDIA Quadro P5000

NVIDIA Quadro P3000 Max-Q

The Nvidia Quadro P3000 Max-Q (official Nvidia Quadro P3000 with Max-Q Design) is a mobile high-end workstation graphics card for notebooks. Similar to the consumer GeForce GTX 1060 (Laptop), it is based on the GP106 chip with 1280 shaders. The graphics card is the more efficient version of the normal Quadro P3000 with slightly reduced clock speeds at a much reduced power consumption (60 Watt versus 75 Watt TGP).

The Quadro GPUs offer certified drivers, which are optimized for stability and performance in professional applications (CAD, DCC, medical, prospection, and visualizing applications). The performance in these areas is therefore much better compared to corresponding consumer GPUs.

Performance

The theoretical performance should be only slightly below the normal Quadro P3000 (as it was with the Max-Q GTX 1060 versus the normal GTX 1060).

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M is a high-end DirectX 12-compatible graphics card for laptops unveiled in March 2014. Similar to the GTX 780M, it is based on the 28 nm GK104 chip (Kepler architecture), but features a higher core clock rate. As of spring 2014, it is the fastest laptop graphics card on the market.

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 GTX 880M, all eight blocks are active for a total of 1536 CUDA cores and 128 TMUs. The chip can access up to 8 GB of GDDR5 memory connected via a 256-bit interface.

Performance

Due to the higher core clock, the computing power has been increased by about 15 percent compared to the GeForce GTX 780M. However, the memory bandwidth stagnates, so the average performance gain is lessened. Our benchmarks show an increase of about 10 percent, making the GTX 880M the fastest mobile graphics card as of spring 2014. The GPU has enough power to run demanding games of 2013/2014 fluently with Full HD resolution and maxed out graphical settings.

Features

The feature set includes support for up to 4 active displays. Furthermore, high resolution monitors of up to 3840x2160 pixels can 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.

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.

New features of the GTX 800M series include Battery Boost (longer battery life while playing games), Shadowplay (recording of in-game videos) and Game Stream (stream PC games on the Nvidia Shield console).

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the GeForce GTX 880M should be similar or slightly above the GTX 780M, leading to a TDP of more than 100 W. Therefore, only large desktop replacements can support the power demands of the GTX 880M.

NVIDIA Quadro P5000

The Nvidia Quadro P5000 is a mobile high-end workstation graphics card for notebooks. Similar to the consumer GeForce GTX 1070 (Laptop), it is based on a slimmed-down GP104 chip with 2048 shaders. The graphics card is designed for the Kaby Lake generation and is the successor to the Quadro M5000M (Maxwell). However, the P5000 is equipped with 16 GB GDDR5 video memory (at a lower bandwidth), while GTX 1070 is limited to 8 GB. The clock rates range between 1164 MHz (base) to 1506 MHz (typical Boost) and up to 1657 MHz (max.). 

The Quadro GPUs offer certified drivers, which are optimized for stability and performance in professional applications (CAD, DCC, medical, prospection, and visualizing applications). The performance in these areas is therefore much better compared to corresponding consumer GPUs.

Performance

The theoretical performance should be on par with the GTX 1070 (if the clocks did not take a massive hit), so the GPU should be significantly faster than the previous M5000M. Even the old M5500M could be beaten.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the Quadro P5000 is similar to the old Quadro M5000M at 100 Watts TGP (max power consumption incl. memory) resp. 73.4 W TDP according to Nvidia. The card is therefore suited for large 17-inch notebooks.