NVIDIA T600 vs NVIDIA Quadro K4000M vs NVIDIA T550 Laptop GPU

NVIDIA T600

NVIDIA Quadro K4000M

The NVIDIA Quadro K4000M is a high-end, DirectX 11.1 compatible graphics card for mobile workstations. It is a Kepler-based GPU built on the GK104 chip (but using only 960 shader cores) and is manufactured in 28nm at TSMC. The Quadro K4000M is built for the Intel Chief River generation (Ivy Bridge) and is the successor to the Fermi-based Quadro 4000M (Huron River platform).

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 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 K4000M, 5 blocks are active leading to the 960 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). 

PCIe 3.0 is now supported by the mobile Kepler series and an optional Turbo mode can automatically overclock the Nvidia card by a theoretical 15 percent if the laptop cooling system allows it. The implementation of this boost mode is done in the BIOS, but it is ultimately dependent upon the manufacturer of the laptop.

Performance

The performance is significantly above the level of the older Quadro 5010M and also beats the GeForce GTX 675M. Therefore, the card will manage both CAD software and demanding 3D games of 2013 in high quality settings.

Features

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

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 K4000M is rated at 100 Watt (TGP according to Nvidia) and is therefore suited for large-sized notebooks 17-inches or greater.

NVIDIA T550 Laptop GPU