Nvidia Announces Tiny Ampere GPU for Workstations

It’s hard to find video cards for anything approaching a reasonable price these days, but maybe not everyone needs top-of-the-line gaming hardware. In a professional workstation, someone might just need the power of Nvidia’s ray tracing and AI technologies, and that’s what the new RTX A2000 is all about. It’s a tiny workstation GPU suitable for even the smallest workstation PCs, and the latest member of the A-series.

As the name implies, the RTX A2000 has ray tracing support via the Ampere architecture. On the hardware side, it has 3,328 CUDA cores, 6GB of GDDR6 memory (with ECC), and 104 Tensor cores. Nvidia is targeting those who are stuck working from home for the foreseeable future but still need access to GPU computing resources for 3D design and AI research. If you’re looking for a mainstream point of comparison, the A2000 is probably a little more capable than the recently released RTX 3050 laptop GPUs. The A2000 is essentially a Quadro card with more modern hardware.

This card is much smaller than any previous Ampere-based GPU, measuring just 6.6 inches long and 2.2 inches tall. That means it can fit in most small form factor cases, which call for low-profile expansion cards. Its power requirements match the small footprint — the A2000 consumes just 70W of power. The next step up, the A4000, pulls twice as much wattage. It’s also closer in size to a conventional GPU.

The compact A2000 has a single blower design for cooling, but there are still four Mini DisplayPort 1.4a ports on the back. The move to MiniDP was a necessary concession to make the card sufficiently diminutive. They’re capable of driving displays up to 4.5K in resolution. However, the card does not have the NVLink capabilities of the more advanced A5000 and A6000 cards. To keep the height down, the card is two slots wide to accommodate the blower. There will also be a bracket to add the A2000 in full-height PC cases as well.

Nvidia says the RTX A2000 will be available through all the usual retail and partner channels in October. It will cost $450, but that might creep upward. While it’s not a gaming card, demand for GPU computing power is still high across the board. The card will also come in small form factor workstation PCs from HP, Dell, and others.

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