Nvidia Quadro K1000M Graphics Card

zechsword.1946

#1 - Dec. 4, 2013, 12:24 a.m.

I may soon be upgrading a very old 2008 Dell XPS with ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series graphics card tower to a Dell Precision with Nvidia Quadro K1000M graphics card laptop (docking, so can be run as a tower as well). My concern is that the only benchmark I’ve been able to find regarding the new system’s graphics card (Quadro) says it runs extremely poorly for Guild Wars 2 (see: http://goo.gl/1KawAL ), and it says that it can’t even run this particular game much higher than 21 fps on low end (if I’m reading the article correctly).

I would pick an Nvidia GeForce card if it were an option, but it isn’t, so I didn’t know if someone could confirm for me whether or not GW2 would even feasibly run on this new laptop. Many other compare/contrast sites compare the Quadro to the Nvidia GeForce GT 630M, which shows it’s benchmark to run GW2 CONSIDERABLY better, however, I do believe it SHOULD run better than my current system (which still get’s a decent 20-60 fps on medium settings).

I apologize if this is in the wrong section. But I didn’t want a loved one to end up wasting a lot of money on a Christmas gift that they believe will be improving my gaming experience that potentially could make it worse!

EDIT

I should add that the new laptop’s CPU processor will be an Intel Core i7-3540M (Dual Core 3.00GHz, 3.7GHz Turbo, 4M cache, 35W), which I believe may be important as I’ve read that GW2 is one of those rare games where the processor can have just as much effect on game performance as the graphics card can.

Ashley Segovia

#7 - Dec. 4, 2013, 10:53 a.m.

Hi zechsword – As everyone else here has already mentioned, the two cards you’re asking about are workstation cards and not intended for gaming. Technically speaking, they should be fast enough and powerful enough to run the game, however, the issue comes in the form of drivers. Nvidia considers these cards to be a “professional” line of cards designed for the creation of games: Autocad, 3D Studio Max, Maya… etc etc. As such, they have tailored their drivers to be specific to those needs.

They then created a separate series of cards designed to function in gaming. This is the more commonly known “Geforce” series. These cards have drivers tailored to gaming, performance and general everyday use.

Now it is possible to get an Quadro or the FirePro cards to play some games but this is only done through third party drivers that circumvent the intended function of the card to boost gaming performance. There isn’t a driver from Nvidia that does this and if you check on nvidia.com’s own forums, they state these cards are not intended for gaming for this very specific reason.

As Nvidia does not consider these cards to be “gaming cards” most software companies do not run hardware and compatibility checks for them. As such, even a game that was running off this card could suddenly be prevented from playing when a new patch hits as the developers never took into consideration someone would try using this for their game.

tl;dr – Workstation cards do not meet min specs – invest in a laptop with a true graphics card intended for gaming.