14 DAY TRIAL // Advanced Micro Devices may have started to deliberately blur the lines between its FirePro professional and FireStream supercomputing GPU adapters / compute modules, but that's just because the latter is a lot less known than the former. NVIDIA, on the other hand, has no intention of mixing its respective brands up.
That much can clearly be seen from the latest leak regarding the Quadro Kx2 series of professional video adapters that NVIDIA is preparing to launch.
You would think that the Santa Clara, California-based company would start to move to the Maxwell GPU architecture, but that's not what is happening.
We actually caught wind of this back in late July, when NVIDIA's latest drivers exposed the existence of the Quadro Kx2 line. Or, rather, the rapid approach of the new card set. There are five of them:
NVIDIA_DEV.0FF3 = NVIDIA Quadro K420 (GK107) NVIDIA_DEV.13BB = NVIDIA Quadro K620 (GM107) NVIDIA_DEV.13BA = NVIDIA Quadro K2200 (GM107) NVIDIA_DEV.11B4 = NVIDIA Quadro K4200 (GK104) NVIDIA_DEV.103C = NVIDIA Quadro K5200 (GK110)
Obviously, the names in the parentheses indicate what graphics processing units the cards will utilize. As you can see, most of hem are based on the Kepler architecture, not the upcoming Maxwell.
In fact, the only reason the Quadro K620 and Quadro K2200 are based on the upcoming chip type is that NVIDIA introduced the mainstream GM107 back in spring, as a sort of trial run, in case it had to redesign the architecture for the 28nm process technology, instead of the intended 20nm.
Sure, the company never actually said it, but whether or not it was the case doesn't change the fact that it, indeed, helped a fair bit. After all, TSMC did, indeed, fail to get the 20nm tech working on time, meaning that NVIDIA, like AMD, is stuck on 28nm for the time being.
Anyway, a new report from Hermitage Akihabara says that the Quadro Kx2 series will be released on August 12. Probably at SIGGRAPH 2014, since August 12 is when that particular exhibition opens. The video cards have 2GB (Quadro K420 / K620), 4GB (Quadro K2200), 6GB (Quadro K4200) and 8GB GDDR5 VRAM (Quadro K5200).
NVIDIA may or may not release the GeForce GT 720 consumer retail card at the same time. That only leaves the Quadro K6200, which should come out later this year. It will be based on Maxwell, not current-gen Kepler, which would fit the profile of the flagship product of NVIDIA's professional series.