Nvidia Announces Quadro M5000, M4000 Maxwell-based Pro Graphics Cards At Siggraph

[Draven35]

On the heels of its introduction of the Quadro M6000 at NAB in April, at SIGGRAPH NVIDIA announced the release of two more Maxwell-architecture-based Quadro professional graphics cards, the Quadro M5000 and Quadro M4000.

Nvidia Announces Quadro M5000, M4000 Maxwell-based Pro Graphics Cards At Siggraph : Read more

 

[ragenalien]

So if they can make these cards single slot, why can't we get single slot geforce cards?

 

[noobzilla771]

Is it worth paying more than 4x to get professional cards? I don't plan on gaming, but I feel like I will get better performance with same price consumer cards for CAD applications.

 

[ragenalien]

Is it worth paying more than 4x to get professional cards? I don't plan on gaming, but I feel like I will get better performance with same price consumer cards for CAD applications.

It depends on the application. There are some apps that NEED a quatro/professional card or they wont work/work so slowly they aren't worth it. Others function just fine with regular geforce cards.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Is it worth paying more than 4x to get professional cards? I don't plan on gaming, but I feel like I will get better performance with same price consumer cards for CAD applications.

It depends on what you're doing, certain applications see significant performance gains from professional cards over their consumer counterparts, including CAD. And it's not all performance either, certain viewport renderers don't work properly on consumer cards, so it's also about driver validation and support. Some workloads require ECC support, or 10-bit color depth support. It's all about weighing your specific needs against the additional price, performance, and features offered by Pro cards.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

So if they can make these cards single slot, why can't we get single slot geforce cards?

They could, but unlike Quadro's that's at the discretion of Nvidia's AIB partners. There is a single slot 750 Ti, but I'm guessing at 120W you're pushing the TDP limits for a single slot card. For consumer cards that straddle that TDP threshold, like the 960, AIB partners are sure to pursue the quieter/cooler option first, if nothing else because it's likely to be the far more popular design.

 

[Shankovich]

So if they can make these cards single slot, why can't we get single slot geforce cards?

The pro cards are chips that come out of the foundry almost perfect and are very stable. They can run very hot without issue, but they're also down clocked to survive running 100% for sometimes days on end. It wouldn't be cost effective for us in gaming cards.

Is it worth paying more than 4x to get professional cards? I don't plan on gaming, but I feel like I will get better performance with same price consumer cards for CAD applications.

No it's not. I have a FirePro W9100. It runs games as good as the R9 290X, but I need it for Ansys and CATIA. If you don't need a pro card, the gaming cards are just as good, and a bit better. Like I said above, pro cards are a bit down clocked and their firmware targets stability first, plus overclocking them is a headache.

 

[littleleo]

Is it worth paying more than 4x to get professional cards? I don't plan on gaming, but I feel like I will get better performance with same price consumer cards for CAD applications.

If you are using CAD with a Quadro card you get tech support so if you have a issue you can get help. If you are using a GeForce card they will tell you good luck, and hang up on you.

 

[Draven35]

We covered this in an article several years back where we put consumer cards versus professional cards and the pro cards did indeed significantly outperform the consumer cards in professional apps. At the time, the lowest end professional card we tested often outperformed the top end game card, and if not, it outperformed most of them.

Off to SIGGRAPH.

 

[iamacow]

So if they can make these cards single slot, why can't we get single slot geforce cards?

Because these are lower TDP and thus lower clocks. Quadros are basically gimped Geforce cards that go forever. My Quadro FX 4800 is still going strong 24/7

 

[palladin9479]

Is it worth paying more than 4x to get professional cards? I don't plan on gaming, but I feel like I will get better performance with same price consumer cards for CAD applications.

Depends, is it revenue generating and do you need manufacturer support? Hardware wise there is very little difference between a Quadro and a Geforce, the software drivers on the other hand are not only optimized but also certified and supported for specific applications. If a business is using a specific application, and that application manufacture has Quadro certification, then that business can be certain to get the advertised results. Both nVidia and the application vender have legal liability for costs incurred if the Quadro product doesn't' work or produces faulty results. A GeForce product on the other hand has no such guarantee or liability. Same with Radeon and Firepro cards. Same with many business targeted solutions, business's pay an extra premium for the support and legal liability. Those are not needed for the home user and thus they don't pay for them. Where it gets dicey is the independent professional who works on contract with their own gear. There may or may not be a business case for them to spend the extra money on the support and liability that comes with a professional level graphics card.

 

[lorfa]

Is it worth paying more than 4x to get professional cards? I don't plan on gaming, but I feel like I will get better performance with same price consumer cards for CAD applications.

Depends, is it revenue generating and do you need manufacturer support? Hardware wise there is very little difference between a Quadro and a Geforce, the software drivers on the other hand are not only optimized but also certified and supported for specific applications. If a business is using a specific application, and that application manufacture has Quadro certification, then that business can be certain to get the advertised results. Both nVidia and the application vender have legal liability for costs incurred if the Quadro product doesn't' work or produces faulty results. A GeForce product on the other hand has no such guarantee or liability. Same with Radeon and Firepro cards. Same with many business targeted solutions, business's pay an extra premium for the support and legal liability. Those are not needed for the home user and thus they don't pay for them. Where it gets dicey is the independent professional who works on contract with their own gear. There may or may not be a business case for them to spend the extra money on the support and liability that comes with a professional level graphics card.

I have inside information on a major gaming studio (not saying who) that does plenty of CG work. They do not have a single quadro card in the entire building.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Is it worth paying more than 4x to get professional cards? I don't plan on gaming, but I feel like I will get better performance with same price consumer cards for CAD applications.

Depends, is it revenue generating and do you need manufacturer support? Hardware wise there is very little difference between a Quadro and a Geforce, the software drivers on the other hand are not only optimized but also certified and supported for specific applications. If a business is using a specific application, and that application manufacture has Quadro certification, then that business can be certain to get the advertised results. Both nVidia and the application vender have legal liability for costs incurred if the Quadro product doesn't' work or produces faulty results. A GeForce product on the other hand has no such guarantee or liability. Same with Radeon and Firepro cards. Same with many business targeted solutions, business's pay an extra premium for the support and legal liability. Those are not needed for the home user and thus they don't pay for them. Where it gets dicey is the independent professional who works on contract with their own gear. There may or may not be a business case for them to spend the extra money on the support and liability that comes with a professional level graphics card.

I have inside information on a major gaming studio (not saying who) that does plenty of CG work. They do not have a single quadro card in the entire building.

... then do they use FirePro's? Unless the game studio you're referring to is either very small, or for some reason only runs binary builds (doesn't actually develop their own content), I really have to question the validity of that claim. So much of the content creation software used in the production pipes of major vfx, animation, and game studios benefit greatly from pro cards (or at least their drivers), that I find it difficult to believe that even a moderately sized studio wouldn't have a good number of workstations equipped with pro cards.

Is there something unique about the production pipe of this studio? Do they not rely on modeling/animation software like Maya or 3ds Max to produce assets?

 

[iamacow]

Lol FirePro are just as bad as the Radeon cards. They update the drivers like once a year and fix nothing. I had to switch back to a Quadro because my FirePro would crash Maya and just not work in Mudbox at all.

If a studio is using FirePro cards than they are wasting hundreds of hours of man power with downtime.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Lol FirePro are just as bad as the Radeon cards. They update the drivers like once a year and fix nothing. I had to switch back to a Quadro because my FirePro would crash Maya and just not work in Mudbox at all.

If a studio is using FirePro cards than they are wasting hundreds of hours of man power with downtime.

I wouldn't know, I've never used a FirePro. Actually I've personally never seen a FirePro used in a studio or academic setting. The last workstations I used had K5000's, and before that 5000's. FirePro's weren't even an option for us at the time, since some of the video editing and compositing software we used relied on CUDA acceleration for compute and viewport rendering.

Last time I checked Nvidia had ~80% share of the pro graphics market, so it wouldn't really surprise me if AMD couldn't provide the same resources for driver validation and support. But unfortunately that's kind of paramount in the world of pro graphics.

 

[palladin9479]

Lol FirePro are just as bad as the Radeon cards. They update the drivers like once a year and fix nothing. I had to switch back to a Quadro because my FirePro would crash Maya and just not work in Mudbox at all.

If a studio is using FirePro cards than they are wasting hundreds of hours of man power with downtime.

I wouldn't know, I've never used a FirePro. Actually I've personally never seen a FirePro used in a studio or academic setting. The last workstations I used had K5000's, and before that 5000's. FirePro's weren't even an option for us at the time, since some of the video editing and compositing software we used relied on CUDA acceleration for compute and viewport rendering.

Last time I checked Nvidia had ~80% share of the pro graphics market, so it wouldn't really surprise me if AMD couldn't provide the same resources for driver validation and support. But unfortunately that's kind of paramount in the world of pro graphics.

I've worked with Firepro cards before, they are fine. The problem is they don't have the same driver model as Nvidia. With nVidia anyone who has a Quadro card can go to their site and download the "latest greatest", while with AMD still relies on OEM's to feature requests and so forth. For updated drivers for some of our 3D modeling stuff we had to contact the system OEM (Dell) who was able to get a fix for the problem. Goes back to that certification I mentioned, the software products tend to be certified on a specific release of a driver for a specific set of cards, not for every future release of those drivers on any future card. NVidia is really good at not regressing with driver updates, so good that when they do have regression it takes everyone by surprise. AMD Firepro not so much.