NVIDIA Quadro 5000M vs NVIDIA Quadro M520 vs NVIDIA Quadro M1000M

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 M520

The Nvidia Quadro M520 is a DirectX 12 (FL 11_0) and OpenGL 4.5-compatible graphics card for mobile workstations. It is a Maxwell-based GPU built on the GM108 chip with 384 shader cores and manufactured in 28 nm by TSMC. That means its similar to the Quadro M500M (DDR3) but uses faster GDDR5 memory. The GeForce 940MX with GDDR5 memory is the consumer variant of the Quadro M520.

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

Compared to Kepler, Maxwell has been optimized in several details to increase power efficiency. Smaller Streaming Multiprocessors (SMM) with only 128 ALUs (Kepler: 192) and an optimized scheduler should lead to better utilization of the shaders. Nvidia promises that a Maxwell SMM with 128 ALUs can offer 90% of the performance of a Kepler SMX with 192 ALUs. GM108 features 3 SMMs and thus 384 shader cores, 24 TMUs and 8 ROPs (64-bit interface).

Another optimization is the massively enlarged L2 cache. The larger size can reduce some of the memory traffic to allow for a relatively narrow memory interface without significantly hurting performance.

GM108 supports DirectX 11.2 (feature level 11.0 only) as well as DirectX 12.

Performance

Currently the clock speeds are not known of the M520 variant. They should be similar to the consumer 940 MX with GDDR5. Therefore, the performance should be similar to the Quadro K620M.

Features

The feature set should include support for up to four active displays. High-resolution monitors of up to 3840x2160 pixels can be connected using DisplayPort 1.2 or HDMI 1.4a (HDMI 2.0 not supported). 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.

Using CUDA or OpenCL, the cores of the Quadro M520 can be used for general calculations.

GM108 integrates the sixth generation of the PureVideo HD video engine (VP6), offering a better decoding performance for H.264 and MPEG-2 videos. Of course, VP6 supports all features of previous generations (4K support, PIP, video encoding via NVENC API).

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the Quadro M520 is rated at 25 Watt TGP (max power consumption including memory and board). That is slightly below the M500M that is rated at 30 Watt. Therefore, the GPU is best suited for laptops 13 - 14-inches in size and above. The M500M also supports Optimus to automatically switch between an integrated graphics card and the Nvidia GPU.

NVIDIA Quadro M1000M

The 28nm NVIDIA Quadro M1000M is a mid-range DirectX 12 (FL 11_0) and OpenGL 4.5-compatible graphics card for mobile workstations. It is a 1st generation Maxwell-based GPU built on the GM107 architecture with 512 of the 640 shader cores activated. Therefore, the GPU is not similar to any current consumer card. The Geforce GTX 950M, for example, uses the full 640 shader cores. The Quadro M1000M is built for the Intel Skylake generation as the successor to the Kepler-based Quadro K1100M. The M1000M typically comes with 2 GB GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz effective at 80 GB/s compared to 44.8 GB/s on the K1100M). 

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 M1000M is still not known, we can only speculate on the performance of the card. However, it is a lower mid-range model from the mobile Quadro line in 2015. It should be slower than the GTX 950M in 3D gaming due to the lower shader count, but should easily outperform the old Quadro K1100M.

Using CUDA (Compute Capability 5.0) or OpenCL 1.2, the cores of the Quadro M1000M can be used for general calculations.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the Quadro M1000M is rated for a 40 Watt TGP including the board and memory components, which is 5 Watt lower than the K1100M. Therefore, the card is suited for 15-inch notebooks and greater.