X

Nvidia RTX A2000 GPU brings ECC VRAM to small workstations

Low-profile but twice as wide.

Lori Grunin Senior Editor / Advice
I've been reviewing hardware and software, devising testing methodology and handed out buying advice for what seems like forever; I'm currently absorbed by computers and gaming hardware, but previously spent many years concentrating on cameras. I've also volunteered with a cat rescue for over 15 years doing adoptions, designing marketing materials, managing volunteers and, of course, photographing cats.
Expertise Photography, PCs and laptops, gaming and gaming accessories
Lori Grunin
nvidia-rtx-a2000-5

It's bigger than it looks.

Nvidia

ECC memory: When ya gotta have it, ya gotta have it. And if you're designing planes, cars, multimillion-dollar movies and more, ya gotta have it. Nvidia's new low-profile, entry-level workstation graphics processor, the $450 RTX A2000, will have 6GB of it when the card ships in October. 

This is the first time the company's made error-correcting memory, which detects and addresses data corruption in memory, available at this price. That means professional 3D designers further down the food chain could potentially get access to the technology. The company announced the mobile version of the GPU in April, and laptops with it begin shipping today.

The A2000 looks smaller than predecessors like the Quadro P2000 (there was no desktop version of the newer T2000), but its looks are deceiving. Nvidia commented that "it's roughly the size of a cell phone, but thicker." Yes, a lot thicker. Unlike older versions of the card, which only required a single PCI slot, the A2000 takes the width of two, despite using Mini DisplayPort for the four connectors. 

Nvidia hasn't provided detailed specs yet, but I'd expect them to be analogous to the mobile A2000 and GeForce RTX 3060.