NVIDIA GeForce 945M vs NVIDIA Quadro 6000 Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The only recorded benchmark in the database for this pairing is Geekbench OpenCL, and it is a decisive win for the NVIDIA Quadro 6000. The Quadro 6000 posts a score of 9846, while the GeForce 945M trails with 8099. That is a 21.6% advantage for the older professional card. In raw compute terms, the data shows the Quadro 6000 outperforming the mobile GeForce part by a wide margin on this heterogeneous workload.

Looking at the nearest rivals for each card helps contextualize these results. The Quadro 6000’s score of 9846 places it just 0.1% ahead of the Quadro M2000M (9832) and 0.4% ahead of the AMD FirePro W5000 (9803). It also edges out the GeForce GTX 1070 (9780) by 0.7%. Against its own field, the Quadro 6000 is essentially at parity with these contemporaries, despite being from an earlier generation. Its only recorded rival that beats it is the GeForce GTX 870M, which scores 9959, a 1.1% lead over the Quadro.

The GeForce 945M, by contrast, sits in a lower performance band. Its 8099 score is 0.2% ahead of the NVIDIA GRID K2 (8080) and 0.4% ahead of the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost (8067). It is narrowly beaten by the AMD Radeon R9 M360 (8129) and the GeForce GTX 950M (8135), both by 0.4%. The delta between the two cards in this head-to-head, 21.6%, is far larger than any gap between either card and its nearest rivals. This suggests the Quadro 6000 occupies a distinctly higher tier in OpenCL compute performance, while the 945M is clustered with lower-power mobile parts.

The wins tally confirms the sweep: the Quadro 6000 wins 1 benchmark, the GeForce 945M wins 0. There is no test in the database where the mobile chip comes out ahead, so the conclusion from the recorded data is unambiguous. The percentile ranks reinforce this: the Quadro 6000 sits at the 47th percentile of all GPUs in the database, while the 945M sits at the 42nd. That 5-point gap is modest in percentile terms, but the 21.6% raw score difference shows how concentrated the distribution can be around a narrow range.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU is faster in the Geekbench OpenCL test?

A: The NVIDIA Quadro 6000, with a score of 9846 versus 8099 for the GeForce 945M. The Quadro leads by 21.6% in this benchmark.

Q: How does the Quadro 6000 compare to its closest rivals?

A: The Quadro 6000 scores 0.1% higher than the Quadro M2000M (9832), 0.4% higher than the AMD FirePro W5000 (9803), and 0.7% higher than the GeForce GTX 1070 (9780). It trails the GeForce GTX 870M (9959) by 1.1%.

Q: How does the GeForce 945M compare to its closest rivals?

A: The 945M scores 0.2% above the NVIDIA GRID K2 (8080) and 0.4% above the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost (8067). It is 0.4% behind both the AMD Radeon R9 M360 (8129) and the GeForce GTX 950M (8135).

Q: What is the percentile ranking for each GPU in the database?

A: The Quadro 6000 is at the 47th percentile of all GPUs, while the GeForce 945M is at the 42nd percentile.

Q: Does the GeForce 945M win any benchmarks against the Quadro 6000?

A: No. The database records one head-to-head benchmark, Geekbench OpenCL, and the Quadro 6000 wins it. The wins tally is 1 for the Quadro and 0 for the GeForce 945M.

Q: What are the memory specifications for each card?

A: The Quadro 6000 has 6 GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus with 143.4 GB/s bandwidth. The GeForce 945M has 2 GB of DDR3 on a 128-bit bus with 28.80 GB/s bandwidth.

The Verdict

The recorded data points to a clear choice for compute-heavy workloads: the NVIDIA Quadro 6000. Its 21.6% lead in Geekbench OpenCL over the GeForce 945M is the single largest delta in this comparison, and it wins the only benchmark in the database. The Quadro also has a higher percentile rank (47th versus 42nd), meaning it sits above a larger share of the GPU population in the database.

For users who need professional-grade compute performance in a workstation context, the Quadro 6000 is the better pick. Its score of 9846 puts it within 1% of the GeForce GTX 870M and ahead of the GTX 1070, both of which are far more recent consumer parts. The 945M, with a score of 8099, sits in a lower performance class, closer to the GRID K2 and GTX 650 Ti Boost. If the workload is primarily OpenCL compute, the Quadro 6000 is the stronger option by a substantial margin.

However, the data does not favor the Quadro in every dimension that matters for actual usage. The GeForce 945M is a Maxwell-generation part built on a 28 nm process, while the Quadro 6000 is a Fermi-generation part on 40 nm. The 945M has a much lower thermal design power at 75 W versus 204 W for the Quadro, and it is an MXM module with no external power connectors, designed for portability. The Quadro 6000 is a dual-slot card requiring a 1x 6-pin and 1x 8-pin power connector, with a suggested PSU of 550 W. For mobile or low-power deployments, the 945M is the only realistic choice, but for raw compute throughput, the Quadro 6000 wins outright in the benchmark data.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ across nearly every measurable specification in the database. The Quadro 6000 has 6 GB of GDDR5 memory, while the GeForce 945M has 2 GB of DDR3. The memory bus widths are 384-bit versus 128-bit, and the resulting bandwidth figures are 143.4 GB/s versus 28.80 GB/s, a 4.98x difference in favor of the Quadro. The memory clocks also differ: the Quadro runs at 747 MHz with 3 Gbps effective, while the 945M runs at 900 MHz with 1800 Mbps effective.

The shading units favor the 945M in count, with 640 versus 448 for the Quadro, but the Quadro has more texture mapping units (56 versus 40) and more raster output units (48 versus 16). The pixel rate is nearly identical: 16.07 GPixel/s for the Quadro versus 16.32 GPixel/s for the 945M. The texture rate, however, favors the 945M at 40.80 GTexel/s versus 32.14 GTexel/s for the Quadro. The floating-point performance (FP32) is higher on the 945M at 1,305.6 GFLOPS versus 1,027.7 GFLOPS for the Quadro, despite the Quadro’s OpenCL benchmark win. The thermal design power is 204 W for the Quadro and 75 W for the 945M. The Quadro uses a dual-slot form factor with 1x 6-pin and 1x 8-pin connectors, while the 945M is an MXM module with no external power connectors. The bus interfaces are PCIe 2.0 x16 for the Quadro and MXM-B (3.0) for the 945M. Display outputs differ: the Quadro offers 1x DVI, 2x DisplayPort, and 1x S-Video, while the 945M is listed as portable device dependent.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gap between these two GPUs is substantial. The Quadro 6000 is built on the Fermi architecture, using the GF100 chip, fabricated on a 40 nm process at TSMC. It contains 3,100 million transistors on a 529 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 5.9 million per mm². The GeForce 945M uses the Maxwell architecture with the GM107 chip, on a 28 nm process, also at TSMC. It has 1,870 million transistors on a 148 mm² die, with a transistor density of 12.6 million per mm². The Maxwell part achieves more than double the density of Fermi, a sign of the process and design improvements between generations.

The generations themselves are telling: the Quadro 6000 belongs to the Quadro Fermi (x000) family, released on 2010-12-09, with its predecessor being the Quadro FX Tesla and its successor the Quadro Kepler. The 945M belongs to the GeForce 900M generation, released on 2015-10-26, with its predecessor the GeForce 800M and its successor the GeForce 10 Mobile. That is nearly five years between launches, which explains the architectural leap.

Both cards support DirectX 12 (11_0) and OpenGL 4.6. The 945M additionally lists Vulkan 1.4 support, while the Quadro 6000 has no Vulkan entry in the database. Neither card has dedicated ray tracing cores or tensor cores. The clock structures differ as well: the Quadro 6000 has no base or boost clock listed, only a memory clock, while the 945M has a base clock of 928 MHz and a boost clock of 1020 MHz. The Quadro 6000’s lack of listed base and boost clocks is notable, but the benchmark data still shows it winning OpenCL by 21.6%, which indicates that raw clock speed is not the sole determinant of compute performance in this case. The Maxwell architecture’s higher FP32 rating and texture rate on the 945M do not translate into a higher OpenCL score, suggesting that memory bandwidth and the larger memory bus on the Quadro play a decisive role in the recorded benchmark outcome.