[Hardware] NVIDIA RTX A6000 Flagship Ampere Workstation Graphics Card Benchmarked, 11% Faster Than Quadro RTX 6000 In SPECviewperf

[Hossam Taibi]

The first performance benchmarks of NVIDIA's RTX A6000 which is the flagship workstation Ampere GPU-based graphics card have leaked out. The benchmarks were leaked by AdoredTV and show us what to expect from the fastest workstation graphics card in NVIDIA's stack which will be replacing its Quadro RTX 6000 solution from 2018.

NVIDIA RTX A6000 Flagship Workstation (GA102 GPU) Graphics Card's Benchmarks Leak Out, 11% Faster Than Its Predecessor

The NVIDIA RTX A6000 was announced earlier this month and after dropping the Tesla branding, NVIDIA has decided to drop Quadro branding from its professional workstation graphics cards too. The card will simply be called the RTX A6000 and is aimed at the workstation and content creation market segment.

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NVIDIA RTX A6000 Graphics Card Specifications

Coming to the specifications, the RTX A6000 is powered by the full GA102 GPU core with 84 SMs or 10752 CUDA cores. We don't have the exact clock speeds since NVIDIA did not share the TFLOPs or Tensor numbers for the card yet but we do know that the Quadro RTX A6000 will offer higher clocks than the A40 due to its blower-fan design which offers higher cooling performance.

In terms of memory, the NVIDIA RTX A6000 features 48 GB of GDDR6 memory. The A6000 offers 768 GB/s speeds with its 16 Gbps memory dies. The RTX A6000 cards support vGPU with various graphics configurations starting at 1 GB up to the whole 48 GB VRAM buffer. Power is provided through the new EPS 12V 8-pin connector which is featured on the back of the card and delivers up to 300W of power to the GPU. Interconnect comes in the form of the latest NVLINK which offers 112.5 GB/s (bi-directional) speeds while the native PCIe Gen 4 interface provides a 16 GB/s link. Display options include four DisplayPort 1.4 on the A6000.

NVIDIA Quadro RTX Series Graphics Card Lineup:

Graphics Card	Quadro GV100	Quadro RTX 5000	Quadro RTX 6000	Quadro RTX 8000	Quadro RTX A4000	Quadro RTX A5000	Quadro RTX A40	Quadro RTX A6000
GPU	Volta GPU	Turing GPU	Turing GPU	Turing GPU	Ampere GPU	Ampere GPU	Ampere GPU	Ampere GPU
GPU Process	12nm	12nm	12nm	12nm	8nm	8nm	8nm	8nm
Die Size	815mm²	545mm²	754mm²	754mm²	392mm²	628mm²	628mm²	628mm²
GPU Cores	5120 Cores	3072 Cores	4608 Cores	4608 Cores	TBA	TBA	10752 Cores	10752 Cores
Tensor Cores	640 Cores	384 Cores	576 Cores	576 Cores	TBA	TBA	656 Cores	656 Cores
Boost Clock	1.62 GHz	1.81 GHz	1.77 GHz	1.77 GHz	TBA	TBA	TBA	1.86 GHz
Single Precision	16.66 TFLOPs	11.2 TFLOPs	16.31 TFLOPs	16.31 TFLOPs	TBA	TBA	TBA	30 TFLOPs
Ray Tracing Spec	N/A	6 GigaRays/Sec	10 GigaRays/Sec	10 GigaRays/Sec	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
VRAM	32 GB HBM2	16 GB GDDR6	24 GB GDDR6	48 GB GDDR6	16 GB GDDR6	24 GB GDDR6	48 GB GDDR6	48 GB GDDR6
NVLINK VRAM	N/A	32 GB With NVLINK	48 GB With NVLINK	96 GB With NVLINK	N/A	48 GB With NVLINK	96 GB With NVLINK	96 GB With NVLINK
Memory Bus	4096-bit	256-bit	384-bit	384-bit	256-bit	384-bit	384-bit	384-bit
Memory Bandwidth	870 GB/s	448 GB/s	672 GB/s	672 GB/s	512 GB/s	768 GB/s	696 GB/s	768 GB/s
TDP	250W	~160W	~200W	~225W	~150W	~230W	300W	300W
Price	$9000 US	$2300 US	$6300 US	$10000 US	TBA	TBA	TBA	TBA
Launch Date	2018	Q4 2018	Q4 2018	Q4 2018	Q1 2021?	Q4 2020?	Q4 2020	Q4 2020

 

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In terms of performance, the benchmarks were reported within the SPECviewperf 2020 benchmark suite at a resolution of 3800x2120. Both the Quadro RTX 6000 and RTX A6000 were compared head on. The RTX A6000 scored a lead in almost all benchmarks with a maximum reported lead of up to 25%. On average, the RTX A6000 turned out to be 11% faster than the Quadro RTX 6000 which is a bit disappointing for a graphics card that features much better specifications and a better graphics architecture.

NVIDIA RTX A6000 Ampere Workstation Graphics Card Benchmarks Leak vs Quadro RTX 6000 (Image Credits: AdoredTV)

There's no explanation why the lead is just 11% over the predecessor but it could be due to several factors that range from drivers or poor optimization in SPECviewperf for the graphics card. NVIDIA will be releasing the RTX A6000 graphics card through its partners in mid of December with a wider GPU availability planned for early next year.