Conclusions
For those of you who own a Quadro card and have been waiting for your chance to upgrade to the new Fermi goodness, now is your chance. The upgrade isn’t cheap (nothing Quadro ever is), the 4000 has an MSRP of $1199 and the 5000 has an MSRP of $2249, but are available immediately. The Quadro 6000 has an MSRP of $4999 but will not be available until the Fall, just like the new QuadroPlex (MSRP $14,500).
Now, NVidia does not currently plan to discontinue the existing Quadro line, so for the next 12 months or so you have a choice: Stick with the existing Quadro FX 4800/5800 cards, or upgrade to the newer Quadro 4000/5000/6000 cards. The existing Quadro cards are still fine cards and in some ways surpass the new cards (the 5800 still has more memory than the 5000, without requiring the immense outlay of cash required for the 6000).
Yes, I know the numbering is confusing. Perhaps the best way to look at it is in the following order from “entry level” to “ultrascale”.
- Quadro 4000 – Fermi Based, 2GB Ram, $1199 (Entry Level)
- Quadro 4800 – 1.5GB Ram, $1500
- Quadro 5000 – Fermi Based, 2.5GB Ram, $2249
- Quadro 5800 – 4GB Ram, $3000
- Quadro 6000 – Fermi Based, 6GB Ram, $4999 (Ultrascale)
The ability to easily double or triple your application rendering performance with nothing but a GPU card swap (as demonstrated above), along with the improve GPGPU capabilities, make upgrading to the new 5000 card a no-brainer. Add in the support for the new OptiX 2, 3d Vision Pro technology, and future features that NVidia is teasing us with, and you can’t go wrong.
It looks like Quadro is back to reclaims its crown as king of the graphics cards, and I for one bow down to our new Fermi overlords.
Feel free to leave questions and comments about the review in the comments below. I’ll do my best to answer any questions!
Dear Randall,
My company is involved in marine simulation (both for training and research purposes). We will upgrade to Presagis Vega Prime. We are currently debating the choice for a GTX 480 or Quadro 5000 for our image generator PCs in our simulators. Our Visual Database development workstations run on the Quadro GTX 4800.
I am curious to hear your advise!
Kind regards,
Martijn
@ Griffin Doh, you’re right.. I just checked the BIOS, I’ve got 2 Xeon 5550’s (8 cores) with HyperThreading enabled. I missed that. I’ll update the article.
Randall,
Thanks a lot for the review, please keep up the great work.
I was wondering if you could clarify the test setup, It was my understanding that Xeon 5550’s could only run 2-way, not 4-way like the 7500’s? Could you please shed some light on your system and its configuration.
Thanks a lot for your time
@ Matt It depends heavily on the application, and faster/newer is always better. But, if you’re in the CAD or 3d Graphics market then I’m pretty sure you would see some improvement.
Randall,
thanks for posting your assessment. I habe a pretty basic question as I am in no way an expert in graphics hardware. Do I benefit of the new GPU with all kinds of workstations or do I need to have a minimal configuration in terms of CPU, working memory etc. to really feel the difference between, let’s say, a 5000 and its predecessor, the 4800?
Just wondering if the Fermi based cards are Mac compatible…
@ Nick D Well, for reasons similar to why you would choose a Quadro4800 over a GTX285. The GTX285 has 240 cores [link], while the Quadro4800 only has 192 [link], but you can look at the benchmarks I posted and see how the Quadro4800 smokes the GTX285 in several benchmarks.
While more cores is nice, it’s not the sole indicator of performance. The Quadro cards are optimized to use the advanced graphics features not typically used by games, but frequently used by CAD & Visualization products. Because of these optimizations, a Quadro will always beat a GeForce when those features come into play.
Randall,
Other than drivers and memory, can you tell me why the 480 core nVidia GTX 480 would not be better than the Quadro 5000 with only 352 cores?
After waiting so long, I am really disappointed the Quadros don’t have the same AND more cores than the GTX 480…
I wonder if NVIDIA could give you a 6000.
@ chris True, but I don’t know of many professional types that are using Stereo on 3 monitors.
“Add in the support for the new OptiX 2, 3d Vision Pro technology” but you would need 2 cards to do stereo on 3 monitors? makes it expensive