The 2021 SIGGRAPH conference took place last week virtually and NVIDIA not only participated (more on the event’s coverage coming up this week with our big Siggraph reports) but introduced a brand new RTX-based GPU oriented at small form-factor (SFF) workstations and computers.
RTX A2000
The NVIDIA RTX A2000 is a low-profile, double-slot wide graphics card targeting the low to mid-level workstation market across CAD and visualization industries. It brings to the market real-time, hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI capabilities at an attractive price-point that should find favor in AEC firms, particularly those working with tight workstation budgets. The RTX A2000 has an estimated street price of 450 USD.
Designed to capitalize on the “interactive rendering” revolution that has been transforming CAD industry workflows now for half a decade, the NVIDIA RTX A2000 can enable many more professionals to tap the power of real-time ray tracing in their daily work.
The NVIDIA RTX A2000 is an Ampere-based GPU with real-time ray tracing cores and AI technology and is designed for small form-factor (SFF) workstations and desktop computers.
“Introducing RT Cores into the NVIDIA RTX A2000 has resulted in impressive rendering speedups for photorealistic visualization compared to the previous generation GPUs,” said Steven Blevins, director of Digital Practice at Cuhaci & Peterson.
“The small form factor and low power usage of the NVIDIA RTX A2000 are extraordinary and ensures fitment in just about any existing workstation chassis,” said Ken Grothman, virtual design, and construction manager at Gilbane Building Company.
The technical details are in summary, here:
- Second-Gen Ray Tracing (RT) Cores — the second-generation RT core technology delivers up to 5x rendering performance from the previous generation.
- Third-Gen Tensor Cores — available in the GPU architecture to enable AI-augmented tools and apps
- CUDA Cores — up to 2x the FP32 throughput of the previous generation to increase graphics and compute workflows
- Up to 6GB of GPU Memory — supports ECC memory for the first time in the 2000 series GPUs, for error-free computing
- PCIe Gen 4 — double the throughput with more than 40 percent bandwidth improvement from the previous generation for accelerating data paths in and out of the GPU
This new card features the latest technologies in the NVIDIA Ampere architecture.
Availability
The NVIDIA RTX A2000 desktop GPU will be available in workstations from manufacturers including ASUS, BOXX Technologies, Dell Technologies, HP, and Lenovo as well as NVIDIA’s global distribution partners starting in October.
Learn more here.