Nvidia launches RTX 1000 and 500 Ada laptop GPUs

Nvidia has recently launched two new graphics cards for professional laptops, which are part of the RTX ADA series. These new graphics cards are the RTX A1000 ADA and the RTX 500 Ada, which were unveiled at MWC 2024.

The RTX Ada series now features the RTX A1000 ADA, packing 2560 CUDA cores, and the RTX 500 ADA, featuring 2048 CUDA cores. With the addition of these two new graphics cards, Nvidia's RTX Ada series now offers a total of seven SKUs.

The RTX 1000 Ada has 6GB of VRAM across a 96-bit bus, offering a maximum memory bandwidth of 192GB/s. That's an improvement over the RTX A1000 (Ampere) laptop GPU with 6GB (96-bit), which was capped at 168GB/s due to the slower memory. Still, it's less than the 4GB variant, which offered 224GB/s thanks to its 128-bit memory bus. Moreover, the new RTX 1000 laptop GPU has a higher TGP than the older model, with the former ranging between 35W and 140W (15W from Dynamic Boost).

As for the RTX 500 Ada, it packs the same number of CUDA cores and memory as the RTX A500. However, the faster memory means its maximum bandwidth (128GB/s) is slightly higher than its predecessor (112GB/s). Lastly, the RTX 500's TGP ranges from 35W to 60W.

Although the generational uplift may look small, Nvidia's performance figures suggest both the RTX 1000 Ada and RTX 500 Ada offer a decent upgrade over their predecessors. For example, while the RTX A500 had a peak FP32 performance of 7 TFLOPS, the new RTX 500 Ada peaks at 9.2 TFLOPS. The difference should be even more noticeable in Tensor workloads, as peak performance increased from 56 to 147.4 TFLOPS. Similarly, the RTX 1000 Ada bumps the FP32 peak performance from 7.5/9.3 TFLOPS (4GB and 6GB variants) to 12.1 TFLOPS. As for peak Tensor performance, it went from 59.7/74.6 TFLOPS to 193 TFLOPS.

KitGuru says: The addition of these two SKUs will be very welcome for anyone looking for an entry-level portable workstation. Seeing the cheapest RTX A500 laptops cost around £900, those powered by the new RTX 500 Ada shouldn't be that far off.

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