NVIDIA Quadro M6000 Review: Maxwell Goes Workstation

We tested the Quadro M6000 in the same Core i7-4960X testbed we used for the previous W9100 review. Samsung's 840 EVO was used for storage (with firmware updates applied) running Windows 8.1 64-bit with all patches and updates installed and 24GB of DDR3-2133. We've dropped the old Quadro 6000 from our results. That card was built in 2010 and our W9100 review already demonstrated substantial performance improvements in most applications between the K6000 and the old Quadro 6000. The new Quadro M6000 just continues that trend.

SpecViewPerf 12:

We're going to start with SpecViewPerf 12, the latest version of the venerable SPEC benchmark. The entire test suite has been overhauled for this version, including a new extensible architecture that's designed to make SVP easier to customize and adapt for a variety of workloads. The test now includes new medical and energy datasets, updates classic viewsets, and includes a new test for the Autodesk Showcase application.

SpecViewPerf includes a variety of tests, so we've chopped them up to make the results easier to read.

Last time around, we noted that AMD was very competitive on price, but not in absolute performance. The launch of the M6000 hits AMD hard at 1080p. The AMD FirePro W9100 is an average of 52% of the performance of NVIDIA's Maxwell-derived Quadro M6000, but does cost 60% less.

One thing that's changed with the launch of the M6000 is that AMD no longer trades shots with NVIDIA for the top spot. Last time around, there were some benchmarks that still favored Team Red. Now, the Quadro M6000 is a clean sweep. SpecViewPerf, however, is a synthetic test and uses a framework to test the various application suites. We'll be turning to the test programs themselves to see if the isolated figures still hold true.