NVIDIA RTX A1000 Laptop GPU vs NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 (Laptop) vs NVIDIA RTX A5500 Laptop GPU

The NVIDIA RTX A1000 Laptop GPU or A1000 Mobile is a professional graphics card for mobile workstations. It is based on the GA107 Ampere chip and offers a slightly slower performance than the consumer GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU. It offers 2,048 CUDA cores, 16 Raytracing and 64 Tensor cores paired with a 128 Bit memory bus.  It is available in different variants from 35 - 95 Watt (TGP) with different clock speeds (and performance). The GPU supports eDP 1.4b to connect the internal monitor and DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 for external connections.

There is no more Max-Q variant (formerly used for the low power variants) but every OEM can choose to implement Max-Q technologies (Dynamic Boost, WhisperMode).

The raw performance should be sloghtly slower than GeForce RTX 3050 for laptops at the same TGP level. Both GPUs depend heavily on good cooling and a high TGP for good performance. At a similar power consumption level the RTX A1000 should be clearly faster than the old Quadro T1200. 

The GA107 chip offers 2.560 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 1,280 INT32 ALUs). With Ampere all shaders could still execute FP32 or INT32 instructions. The raytracing and tensor cores on the chip were also improved according to Nvidia. However, RTX A1000 can only use 2048 CUDA cores. The Ampere chips also include an improved 5th generation video encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and a 7th generation decoder (for various formats now including AV1).

The GA107 chip is manufactured by Samsung in 8nm (8N), which is not quite able to keep up with the 7nm node at TSMC (e.g. used by AMD and also for the professional GA100 Ampere chip). Depending on the TGP, the A1200 can also be used in thin and light laptops (with 35 Watt TGP e.g.).

The Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 for laptops is a professional high-end graphics card for big and powerful laptops and mobile workstations. It is based on the same TU102 chip as the consumer GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. Compared to the desktop RTX 6000, the mobile variant offers lower clock speeds.

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.

Features

NVIDIA manufacturers the TU102 chip on a 12 nm FinFET process and includes features like Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and Real-Time Ray Tracing (RTRT), which should combine to create more realistic lighting effects than older GPUs based on the company's Pascal architecture (if the games support it). The Quadro RTX 6000 is also DisplayPort 1.4 ready, while there is also support for HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) and H.265 video en/decoding (PlayReady 3.0).

Performance

Due to the lower clock speeds, the mobile RTX 6000 lags slightly behind the desktop version with the same name. Nvidia states for example that a desktop system using the RTX 6000 is on average 13% faster in the SPECviewperf13 4k benchmark.

Due to the extremely high power consumption of 200 Watt (TDP), the mobile Quadro RTX 6000 needs an excellent cooling solution and will be used only in big laptops.

The NVIDIA RTX A5500 Laptop GPU or A5500 Mobile is a professional graphics card for mobile workstations. It is based on the GA103S Ampere chip and similar to the consumer GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU. It offers the same 7424 graphics cores, 58 RT cores, 232 Tensor cores, and 16 GB GDDR6 graphics memory with a 256 Bit memory bus. It supports PCIe 4.0 and will be available in different variants from 80 - 165 Watt (TGP) with different clock speeds (and performance). The GPU supports eDP 1.4b to connect the internal monitor and DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 for external connections.

There is no more Max-Q variant (formerly used for the low power variants) but every OEM can choose to implement Max-Q technologies (Dynamic Boost, Whispermode).

The raw performance should be similar to the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti laptop at the same TGP level. Both GPUs depend heavily on good cooling and a high TGP for good performance. At a similar power consumption level, the RTX A5500 should be clearly faster than the old RTX A5000 и Quadro RTX 5000. The desktop variant of the A5500 however, is a lot faster.

The GA103S chip offers 7424 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 3712 INT32 ALUs). With Ampere, all shaders could still execute FP32 or INT32 instructions. The raytracing and tensor cores on the chip were also improved according to Nvidia. The Ampere chips also include an improved 5th generation video encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and a 7th generation decoder (for various formats now including AV1).

The GA103S chip is manufactured by Samsung in 8nm (8N), which is not quite able to keep up with the 7nm node at TSMC (e.g. used by AMD and also for the professional GA100 Ampere chip).