NVIDIA Quadro 5000M vs NVIDIA Quadro 3000M vs NVIDIA Quadro M4000M

NVIDIA Quadro 5000M

The NVIDIA Quadro 5000M is a professional workstation graphics card based on the Fermi architecture. Therefore, the 5000M likely shares many similarities  to the GeForce GTX 480M which offers more CUDA cores. The Quadro is the first mobile GPU that offers ECC RAM and double-precision floating point cores.

The Quadro series also 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. 

The shader/CUDA cores can be accessed using DirectX 11 or OpenGL 4.1 for graphics rendering and DirectCompute, OpenCL, AXE and CUDA for general purpose calculations. Due to the new Fermi core, the 5000M should offer higher performance in general purpose calculations compared to its predecessors.

Furthermore, the Quadro 5000M is compatible with Nvidia 3D Vision Pro for stereoscopic viewing.

Similar to the GeForce GTX 480M, the Quadro 5000M is specified at 100 Watt TDP and is therefore usually reserved for large laptops with ample cooling, such as the Clevo D901F.

At the time of arrival (mid 2010), the Quadro 5000M was the fastest professional workstation graphics card for laptops and is the successor to the old G92b-based GeForce FX 3800M. Compared to desktop Quadro cards, the mobile Quadro 5000M offers less shader cores and likely a lower core clock rate as well.

NVIDIA Quadro 3000M

NVIDIA Quadro M4000M

The Nvidia Quadro M4000M is a high-end, DirectX 12 (FL_12_1) and OpenGL 4.5-compatible graphics card for mobile workstations. It is a Maxwell-based GPU built on the GM204 chip with all 1280 of the 1536 shader cores activated and is manufactured in 28 nm at TSMC. Therefore, the GPU is similar to the consumer Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M. The Quadro M4000M is built for the Intel Skylake generation and is a successor to the Quadro K4100M (Kepler-based). The M4000M usually comes with 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz effective, 160 GB/s opposed to 102.4 GB/s of the K4100M). 

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

The clock speeds of the Quadro M4000M are very similar to the GTX 970M based on the same chip. The base clock is slightly higher with 975 versus 924 MHz but the Boost speed is lower at 1013 versus 1038 MHz. Therefore, with good cooling the GTX 970M should be slightly faster. Compared to the Quadro line-up, it is the second fastest Quadro card in 2015 and therefore clearly faster than the old Quadro K4100M.

Using CUDA (Compute Capability 5.2) or OpenCL 1.2, the cores of the Quadro M4000M can be used for general calculations.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the Quadro M4000M is rated at the same TGP of 100 Watt as the M5000M and older K5100M/K4100M (including the board and memory components). Therefore, the card is suited for large notebooks with 17-inch displays or greater.