NVIDIA Expands Its Maxwell-based Quadro Lineup With M4000 & M5000 Workstation Cards

SIGGRAPH became the launching platform for NVIDIA’s DesignWorks suite of tools and libraries, but that wasn’t enough to satiate the company’s appetite. Being a de facto graphics conference, SIGGRAPH is a great place to introduce brand-new workstation cards. In this case, we’re talking the second and third Maxwell-based Quadros: M4000 and M5000. Given that the first Maxwell Quadro was the M6000, it’s not too hard to figure out how these new cards fall into the current lineup.

The M4000 replaces the K4200, and the M5000, the K5200. Pricing is sure to keep similar to those, with the M4000 hovering around ~$1,000, and the M5000, ~$2,000 (we’re waiting on official pricing information). Both cards follow the aesthetic cues of the M6000, but in lieu of the high-end metal chassis, both cards are enveloped in a matte plastic instead. With their green accents, both cards still look good.

NVIDIA’s Quadro M4000

NVIDIA’s Quadro M5000

While the beefier M5000 remains a dual-slot solution, the M4000 scales things down enough to fit into a single-slot solution. It’s actually quite elegant, especially with its simple video out options: 4x DisplayPort. With the bulkier frame of the M5000, a DVI-D is tacked on for good measure.

The M5000 shares a few elements of the K5200: it has 8GB of VRAM and the same 150W TDP power rating. It also has less cores, which would hint that it might not be that much faster, but there is actually a significant boost: K5200 is spec’d for 3 TFLOPs, while the new M5000 hits 4.3 TFLOPs.

A similar gain can be seen in the M4000 vs. K4200 matchup. The new card hits 2.6 TFLOPs, adding an effective 500 GFLOPs to the K4200’s 2.1 TFLOPs. To add some perspective, the M6000 hits 6 TFLOPs.

I’m not quite sure at this point when these new Quadro cards will hit etail, but I can’t imagine it’ll take too long. So, with the top range of the Maxwell-based Quadros covered, how about we get an update on the mobile side, hmm, NVIDIA?