Nvidia Takes Fermi to Entry-Level Professionals

By Marcus Yam
published

Fermi for work.

Nvidia's Fermi transformation is nearly complete, as this week it is expanding to both retail shelves and now into the entry-level professional space.

The company debuted two new Quadro products based on Fermi – the mid-range Quadro 2000 (opens in new tab) with 192 CUDA processing cores and the entry-level Quadro 600 (opens in new tab) with 96 CUDA processor cores.

Nvidia says that the Quadro 2000 delivers 1.5 times the geometry performance of the previous Quadro GPU in the mid-range. Helping the performance boost is Scalable Geometry Engine technology that helps CAD and DCC applications such as SolidWorks and Autodesk 3ds Max.

At a considerably lower cost, the Quadro 600 is a half height, energy efficient card that'll accelerate Autodesk AutoCAD 2011 to handle models that are twice the size and complexity compared to the previous entry-level card.

Both the Quadro 2000 and Quadro 600 feature 1GB of graphics memory and are compatible with the new 3D Vision Pro active shutter-glasses solution, providing the option for the third-dimension, or Avatar.

Since both cards will be used in work settings, both the Quadro 2000 and Quadro 600 feature an "ultra-quiet" design.

The Quadro 2000 is priced at $599 and Quadro 600 is at  $199, both available now.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
32 Comments Comment from the forums
  • tmk221
    how do they compare to similary priced AMD offerings ?
    Reply
  • jomofro39
    Yes! Please let's get some benchmarks between these and AMD workstation graphics cards, that would be oh so helpful in getting my IT dept. to get the card I need for Solidworks. THG to the rescue?
    Reply
  • afrobacon
    9248354 said:
    how do they compare to similary priced AMD offerings ?

    I wouldn't expect the comparrison to go in Nvidia's favor. Otherwise this advertisement article would have made sure to point that out.
    Reply
  • megamanx00
    So we see a Quadro version of the GTS 430 before a retail one. The specs just give a big "meh" especially since competing Firepro products have been out for a while now.
    Reply
  • afrobaconI wouldn't expect the comparrison to go in Nvidia's favor. Otherwise this advertisement article would have made sure to point that out.
    I agree this article is an advertisement. That said, in the professional graphics arena, drivers are king. I would not be surprised to see AMD parts with much better theoretical performance get beaten in the real world by these nvidia parts. It may be purely for historical reasons, but give credit where credit is due: nvidia generally has good driver optimizations for many applications, and these optimized drivers often best AMD's offerings.
    Reply
  • mrmotion
    jomofro39Yes! Please let's get some benchmarks between these and AMD workstation graphics cards, that would be oh so helpful in getting my IT dept. to get the card I need for Solidworks. THG to the rescue?
    I would also like to see a solidworks shoot out. If you dont have a test maybe something like this one: http://www.solidmuse.com/solidworks-benchmark-scoobydoo-surface-model.html
    Help us poor people stuck with IT built rigs who think any run of the mill card can handle solidworks!!! Let alone the p4 im still forced to use... Damn IT dept.
    Reply
  • jomofro39
    mrmotionI would also like to see a solidworks shoot out. If you dont have a test maybe something like this one: http://www.solidmuse.com/solidwork model.htmlHelp us poor people stuck with IT built rigs who think any run of the mill card can handle solidworks!!! Let alone the p4 im still forced to use... Damn IT dept.Yeah, at least I managed to salvage a rig with a dual-core. Boo to the bad small-business IT deptartments!
    Reply
  • JohnA
    jomofro39Yes! Please let's get some benchmarks between these and AMD workstation graphics cards, that would be oh so helpful in getting my IT dept. to get the card I need for Solidworks. THG to the rescue?
    Tom's hasn't done a Workstation Chart since 2007, if their search engine is working right. Back then, the FX 570 were beating out top of the line FireGl cards costing 10 times as much in Solidworks benchmarks. As Anna and everyone else on the Solidworks forums says, it's all about CPU. Get the fastest processor you can get, which is Core i7, fast memory, and a good hard drive. Don't blow more than 500 on the video card, and 200 is really enough unless you do a lot of rendering and presentation stuff. I'm using a Dell M6400 notebook. About two years old, Core 2 extreme worth every penny, and FX2700m graphics card. My co-worker opted for the quad core and the 3700m, and his is considerably slower than mine in everything solidworks. He is a modeling and sim guy so he got the right combo for what he normally does with it. I know a lot has changed, and AMD has done some catching up, but Nvidia still leads in drivers.
    Reply
  • LORD_ORION
    Alot of popular software is CUDA only in this space, so no comparrison can be made.

    Regardless, ATI stream blows. Go look at folding at home, Nvidia crushes AMD when it comes to parallel performance.
    Reply
  • scrumworks
    LORD_ORIONAlot of popular software is CUDA only in this space, so no comparrison can be made.Regardless, ATI stream blows. Go look at folding at home, Nvidia crushes AMD when it comes to parallel performance.
    I bet you work for nvidia.
    Reply