Nvidia unveils Quadro RTX 6000 24GB GDDR6 laptop GPU, performance near desktop RTX 2080 Ti
If you’re the sort of person who’s so rich you don’t have to check your bank balance on a weekly/daily/hourly basis, you may just be the sort of person who could be interested in Nvidia’s monstrous new laptop GPU. Unveiled yesterday, the mobile Quadro RTX 6000 is the fastest laptop graphics chip in existence.
Specs-wise, the Quadro RTX 6000 mobile is exactly the same as its desktop counterpart. We’re talking 4608 CUDA cores, 576 Tensor cores, 72 Ray Tracing cores, and a whopping 24GB GDDR6 memory on a 384-bit memory interface. It uses a fully unlocked version of the TU102 GPU used for the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, which itself has 4352 CUDA cores, 544 Tensor and 68 RT cores.
The Quadro RTX 6000 basically sounds like a graphics card which has no business being in a laptop, particularly Nvidia’s new ‘Ace’ laptop reference design which promises a slim form factor.
Nvidia reckons its “innovative thermal design” will be enough to keep the Quadro RTX 6000 cool even within a 25mm thick laptop. Team Green even believes the end product will be “cool to the touch” while in use.
You’ve got a 300W GPU trapped inside a tiny case. That’s a whole lot of heat to dissipate so we’d be interested to see just how effective the new titanium vapour chambers will be. Nvidia reckons performance is within 10% of the desktop variant which would certainly be impressive.
If you’re not feeling quite so flush, there’s also the Quadro RTX 5000 mobile to consider. This comes with a cut-down 3072 CUDA cores and 16GB GDDR6 memory.
As for pricing, that’s not been officially confirmed yet. The desktop versions launched at $6300 and $2300 for the RTX 6000 and RTX 5000 respectively, so the laptop versions definitely aren’t going to be cheap. Go for a Quadro RTX 6000 laptop and you’re quite probably going to be looking at the five-figure mark.
If you’re primarily a gamer, these sorts of workstation graphics cards are well outside the realms of what you should be looking at. The sort of gaming performance they offer is certainly not worth the additional cost. Mobile GPUs such as this are specifically targeted at those who need high-end hardware on the move for rendering, modelling, and other resource intense processes.