Nvidia Quadro


Quadro is Nvidia's brand for graphics cards intended for use in workstations running professional computer-aided design, computer-generated imagery, digital content creation applications, scientific calculations and machine learning.
The GPU chips on Quadro-branded graphics cards are identical to those used on GeForce-branded graphics cards. Differences between the Quadro and GeForce cards include the use of ECC memory and enhanced floating point precision. These are desirable properties when the cards are used for calculations which, in contrast to graphics rendering, require reliability and precision.
The Nvidia Quadro product line directly competes with AMD's Radeon Pro line of professional workstation cards.

History

The Quadro line of GPU cards emerged in an effort towards market segmentation by Nvidia. In introducing Quadro, Nvidia was able to charge a premium for essentially the same graphics hardware in professional markets, and direct resources to properly serve the needs of those markets. To differentiate their offerings, Nvidia used driver software and firmware to selectively enable features vital to segments of the workstation market, such as high-performance anti-aliased lines and two-sided lighting, in the Quadro product. The Quadro line also received improved support through a certified driver program. These features were of little value to the gamers that Nvidia's products already sold to, but their lack prevented high-end customers from using the less expensive products.
There are parallels between the market segmentation used to sell the Quadro line of products to workstation markets and the Tesla line of products to engineering and HPC markets.
In a settlement of a patent infringement lawsuit between SGI and Nvidia, SGI acquired rights to speed-binned Nvidia graphics chips which they shipped under the VPro product label. These designs were completely separate from the SGI Odyssey based VPro products initially sold on their IRIX workstations which used a completely different bus. SGI's Nvidia-based VPro line included the VPro V3, VPro VR3, VPro V7, and VPro VR7.

Quadro SDI

Actual extra cards only for Quadro 4000 cards and higher:
consists of a line of external servers for rendering videos. A Quadro Plex contains multiple Quadro FX video cards. A client computer connects to Quadro Plex to initiate rendering. More data in Nvidia Tesla Cards.

Quadro SLI and SYNC

, or SLI, is the next generation of Plex. SLI can improve Frame Rendering, FSAA.
Quadro SLI support Mosaic for 2 Cards and 8 Monitors.
With Quadro SYNC Card support of max. 16 Monitors possible.
Most Cards have SLI-Bridge-Slot for 2, 3 or 4 cards on one main board.
Acceleration of scienctific calculations is possible with CUDA and OpenCL.
Nvidia has 4 types of SLI bridges:
More see SLI.

Quadro VCA

Nvidia supports SLI and supercomputing with its 8-GPU Visual Computing Appliance. Nvidia Iray, Chaosgroup V-Ray and Nvidia OptiX accelerate Raytracing for Maya, 3DS Max, Cinema4D, Rhinoceros and others. All software with CUDA or OpenCL, such as ANSYS, NASTRAN, ABAQUS, and OpenFoam, can benefit from VCA.
The DGX-1 is available with 8 GP100 Cards.
More data in Nvidia Tesla Cards.

Quadro RTX

The Quadro RTX series is based on the Turing microarchitecture, and features real-time raytracing. This is accelerated by the use of new RT cores, which are designed to process quadtrees and spherical hierarchies, and speed up collision tests with individual triangles.
The raytracing performed by the RT cores can be used to produce reflections, refractions and shadows, replacing traditional raster techniques such as cube maps and depth maps. Instead of replacing rasterization entirely, however, the information gathered from ray-tracing can be used to augment the shading with information that is much more physically correct, especially regarding off-camera action.
Tensor cores further enhance the image produced by raytracing, and are used to de-noise a partially rendered image. The Tensor core performs the result of deep learning on supercomputers to codify how to, for example, perform better up scaling than a standard algorithm would, which results in higher perceived resolution. In the Tensor core's primary usage, a problem to be solved is analyzed on a supercomputer, which is taught by example what results are desired, and the supercomputer determines a method to use to achieve those results, which is then done with the consumer's Tensor core. These methods are delivered "over the air" to consumers.
RTX is also the name of the development platform introduced for the Quadro RTX series. RTX leverages Microsoft's DXR, OptiX and Vulkan for access to raytracing.
Turing is manufactured using TSMC's 12 nm FinFET semiconductor fabrication process. Quadro RTX also uses GDDR6 memory from Samsung Electronics.

Video cards

GeForce

Many of these cards use the same core as the game- and action-oriented GeForce video cards by Nvidia. Those cards that are identical to the desktop cards can be software modified to identify themselves as the equivalent Quadro cards and this allows optimized drivers intended for the Quadro cards to be installed on the system. While this may not offer all of the performance of the equivalent Quadro card, it can improve performance in certain applications, but may require installing the MAXtreme driver for comparable speed.
The performance difference comes in the firmware controlling the card. Given the importance of speed in a game, a system used for gaming can shut down textures, shading, or rendering after only approximating a final output—in order to keep the overall frame rate high. The algorithms on a CAD-oriented card tend rather to complete all rendering operations, even if that introduces delays or variations in the timing, prioritising accuracy and rendering quality over speed. A Geforce card focuses more on texture fillrates and high framerates with lighting and sound, but Quadro cards prioritize wireframe rendering and object interactions.

Software

With Caps Viewer all Windows Users can see data of the graphic Card, the installed Driver and can test some Features.
GPU-Z reads also data of the graphic cards and the user can send some data for better database.

Quadro drivers

Supported CUDA Level of GPU and Card.
For own Card Test see CUDA-Z Tool

Desktop PCI Express

Quadro FX (without CUDA, OpenCL, or Vulkan)

1 Nvidia Quadro 342.01 WHQL: support of OpenGL 3.3 and OpenCL 1.1 for legacy Tesla microarchitecture Quadros.
2 Nvidia Quadro 377.83 WHQL: support of OpenGL 4.5, OpenCL 1.1 for legacy Fermi microarchitecture Quadros.
3 Nvidia Quadro 451.77 WHQL: support of OpenGL 4.6, OpenCL 1.2 for Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal & Volta.
4 OpenCL 1.1 is available for Tesla-Chips, OpenCL 1.0 for some Cards with G8x, G9x and GT200 by MAC OS X

Quadro RTX

Quadro
GPU		LaunchCoreCore
clock		Memory clockMemory size
Memory typeMemory
bandwidth		3-pin
stereo
connector		CUDA
cores		CUDA
Compute
Capa-
bility		Tensor
cores		RT
cores		Half
precision		Single
precision		Double
precision		DirectXOpen GLOpen CLVulkanPower
max.		MonitorOutputNear GeForce ModelNotes
UnitsMHzMHzMiBGiB/sTFLOPSTFLOPSGFLOPSWatt
Quadro RTX 40002018-11-13TU104-8501005-154516258192256-bit GDDR641623047.52883614.27.1221.812.0 4.61.21.11603x DP 1.4, Virtual LinkGeForce RTX 2070Turing-based
Quadro RTX 50002018-08-13TU104-8751620-1815175016384 256-bit GDDR644830727.53844822.311.235012.0 4.61.21.12654x DP 1.4, Virtual LinkGeForce RTX 2080 SUPERTuring-based
Quadro RTX 60002018-08-13TU102-8751440-1770175024576 384-bit GDDR667246087.55767232.616.3509.812.0 4.61.21.12954x DP 1.4, Virtual LinkNvidia TITAN RTXTuring-based
Quadro RTX 80002018-08-13TU102-8751395-1770175049152 384-bit GDDR667246087.55767232.616.3509.812.0 4.61.21.12954x DP 1.4, Virtual LinkNvidia TITAN RTXTuring-based
Quadro
GPU		LaunchCoreCore
clock
Memory
clock
Memory
size
Memory
Memory
bandwidth
3-pin
stereo
connector		CUDA
cores		CUDA
Compute
Capa-
bility		Tensor
cores		RT
cores		Half
precision		Single
precision		Double
precision		DirectXOpen GLOpen CLVulkanPower
max.
Monitor OutputNear GeForce ModelNotes

Desktop AGP

The Nvidia Quadro NVS graphics processing units provide business graphics solutions for manufacturers of small, medium, and enterprise-level business workstations. The Nvidia Quadro NVS desktop solutions enable multi-display graphics for businesses such as financial traders.

Quadro FX M (without Vulkan)

Quadro
GPU		LaunchCoreCore
clock		Memory clockMemory size
Memory typeMemory
bandwidth		CUDA
cores		CUDA
Compute
Capa-
bility		Half
precision		Single
precision		Double
precision		DirectXOpen GLOpen CLVulkanPower
max.
UnitsMHzMHzMiBGiB/sTFLOPSTFLOPSGFLOPSWatt
Quadro RTX 3000 Mobile2019-05-27TU106139017506144192-bit GDDR633623047.512.86.419912.0 4.61.21.180
Quadro RTX 4000 Mobile2019-05-27TU104156017508192256-bit GDDR644825607.516.08.025012.0 4.61.21.1110
Quadro RTX 5000 Mobile2019-05-27TU1041530175016384256-bit GDDR644830727.518.89.429712.0 4.61.21.1110
Quadro
GPU		LaunchCoreCore
clock
Memory
clock
Memory
size
Memory
Memory
bandwidth
CUDA
cores		CUDA
Compute
Capa-
bility		Half
precision		Single
precision		Double
precision		DirectXOpen GLOpen CLVulkanPower
max.

Quadro NVS M

HW accelerated encode and decode are supported on NVIDIA Quadro products with Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell and Pascal generation GPUs.