Rumor: Nvidia Working on Professional GK110-based Card

By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

Nvidia might be bringing a workstation class card based on the GK110 GPU in the near future.

Nvidia is reportedly expanding its range of professional workstation cards with a new SKU based on the GK110, the same architecture used in the Tesla K20, K20X and the GeForce GTX Titan. The new card will presumably be called the Quadro K6000 and will include 208 TMUs, 40 ROPs and carry 5 GB of GDDR5 over a 320-bit memory interface.

It is likely that the card will have 13 of the GK110's 15 SMXs enabled, by comparison the GTX Titan has 14 SMXs enabled and there are no reported cards with all 15 enabled. Consequently the Quadro K6000 can be expected to have a CUDA core count that goes up to 2496.

The Quadro K6000 is expected to release in the near future with an expected sticker price of between $2500 and $4000 and may turn out to be an worthy upgrade to the Fermi based Quadro 6000 as it should offer roughly twice the performance.

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Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

16 Comments Comment from the forums
  • blibba
    *a worthy upgrade from
    Reply
  • ipwn3r456
    What about the GeForce 700 Series...
    Reply
  • edogawa
    ipwn3r456What about the GeForce 700 Series...
    This isn't a gaming card, this is a workstation card, big difference.
    Reply
  • vmem
    edogawaThis isn't a gaming card, this is a workstation card, big difference.
    yes, but it's interesting that they'll release the workstation design before the gaming design. I thought companies typically have us "gamers and enthusiasts" "beta-test" new designs before putting it in workstations at a multi-thousand dollar price tag...
    Reply
  • dragonsqrrl
    vmemyes, but it's interesting that they'll release the workstation design before the gaming design. I thought companies typically have us "gamers and enthusiasts" "beta-test" new designs before putting it in workstations at a multi-thousand dollar price tag...There's already a gaming card based on GK110, the GTX Titan. And it's not about 'beta' testing. There's additional validation and more rigorous driver optimizations that go into developing pro cards, and that naturally takes more time. So it isn't unusual for Quadro's to arrive after their Geforce counterparts.
    Reply
  • dragonsqrrl
    It's interesting that the K6000 will be powered by a 13 SMX GK110. This suggests that there will be a higher performance solution, probably called K7000, at the top of the lineup. Makes sense, since there's quite a gap between a 14 SMX GK110 and the K5000.
    Reply
  • wethrowpie
    What they should work on is their abysmal 2d quality and video playback quality. I'm utterly disgusted when I look at nvidia cards, and quite frankly I have no preference other than image quality from either vendor. I'm far from being a teen fanboy. Nvidia really needs to sort it's shit out.
    Reply
  • frostyfireball
    vmemyes, but it's interesting that they'll release the workstation design before the gaming design. I thought companies typically have us "gamers and enthusiasts" "beta-test" new designs before putting it in workstations at a multi-thousand dollar price tag...
    Oh but they are, this is the GTX Titan with an extra SMX disabled and different drivers.
    Reply
  • frostyfireball
    vmemyes, but it's interesting that they'll release the workstation design before the gaming design. I thought companies typically have us "gamers and enthusiasts" "beta-test" new designs before putting it in workstations at a multi-thousand dollar price tag...
    Oh but they have, GTX Titan is this same card but with 1 extra SMX enabled.
    Reply
  • COLGeek
    For professional-CUDA enabled apps, this will be a beast. For the gaming community, not much here. Now if the Titan were in the $500-600 range, and the K6000 in the $1000 range, these things would sell out.
    Reply