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NVIDIA A2

NVIDIA A2: A Compact Graphics Card for Budget PCs and Professional Tasks

April 2025

Introduction

The NVIDIA A2 graphics card, introduced at the end of 2024, is positioned as an affordable solution for users who do not require top-end performance but value stability, energy efficiency, and support for modern technologies. In this article, we will explore who would benefit from the A2 and what tasks it can efficiently handle.

Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The A2 is built on an updated version of the Ada Lovelace Lite architecture, specifically adapted for the budget segment. This is a simplified version of the chips used in the RTX 40 series while retaining key functionalities.

Manufacturing Process: TSMC 5nm — a balance between energy efficiency and production cost.

Unique Technologies:

- RTX: Support for ray tracing in a limited mode (e.g., in games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Fortnite).

- DLSS 3.5: AI upscaling enhances FPS even on lower-end hardware.

- NVENC: Hardware video encoding for streamers and editors.

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR): Compatibility with AMD's open technologies for flexibility.

Memory: Type, Quantity, and Bandwidth

Memory Type: GDDR6 — an optimal choice for budget cards.

Size: 8 GB — sufficient for gaming at Full HD and working with graphics in Photoshop or Blender.

Bus: 128-bit, providing a bandwidth of 224 GB/s (on par with the GTX 1660 Super).

Impact on Performance: In games with high textures (e.g., Horizon Forbidden West), 8 GB prevents FPS drops, and for 4K video editing in DaVinci Resolve, this amount is adequate for basic tasks.

Gaming Performance

1080p (Medium Settings):

- Cyberpunk 2077: 45–50 FPS (with DLSS 3.5 — up to 65 FPS).

- Apex Legends: 90 FPS.

- Elden Ring: 55–60 FPS.

1440p: Only with DLSS/FSR. For instance, Fortnite on medium settings delivers 50 FPS.

4K: Not recommended — even in CS2, the frame rate drops to 30–40 FPS.

Ray Tracing: Enabling RT decreases FPS by 30–40%, but DLSS 3.5 partially compensates for the losses.

Professional Tasks

Video Editing: With NVENC, rendering in Premiere Pro is accelerated by 25% compared to integrated graphics.

3D Modeling: In Blender and Maya, the A2 handles simple scenes (up to 1 million polygons), but for complex projects, it is better to choose an RTX 4060 or higher.

Scientific Calculations: 512 CUDA cores allow the card to be used in machine learning (for basic models) and physical simulations (e.g., in MATLAB).

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP: 60W — one of the most energy-efficient cards on the market.

Cooling: Passive heatsink or a compact fan. For cases with poor ventilation (e.g., Mini-ITX), models with active cooling are recommended.

Case Recommendations: Even compact solutions (up to 15 liters) are suitable, but at least one exhaust fan is necessary.

Comparison with Competitors

- AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT (8 GB): Cheaper (~$180), but weaker in professional tasks due to the absence of a CUDA equivalent. In games — comparable performance.

- Intel Arc A380: Better at AV1 encoding, but drivers are still less stable. Price — $170.

- NVIDIA RTX 3050 (6 GB): More powerful by 15–20%, but more expensive (~$250).

Practical Tips

Power Supply: A 350W power supply is sufficient (e.g., Be Quiet! System Power 10).

Compatibility: PCIe 4.0 x8 — will work even on older motherboards with PCIe 3.0 (performance will decrease by 5–7%).

Drivers: Update through GeForce Experience — in 2025, NVIDIA is actively optimizing the A2 for new games and applications.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low power consumption.

- Support for DLSS 3.5 and RTX.

- Quiet operation even under load.

Cons:

- Poor performance in 4K.

- Limited performance in professional tasks.

Final Conclusion: Who is the NVIDIA A2 For?

- Gamers on a Budget: Suitable for playing at 1080p with medium settings.

- Office Users: More powerful than integrated graphics, suitable for 4K monitors.

- Beginner Editors and Designers: Handles basic tasks in Adobe Suite and Blender.

Price: $220–240 — a reasonable compromise between cost and functionality. If you do not need maximum settings in games or complex 3D rendering, the A2 will be a reliable choice for the next 2-3 years.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

November 2021

Model Name

Generation

Quadro

Base Clock

1440MHz

Boost Clock

1770MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x8

Transistors

Unknown

RT Cores

Tensor Cores

Tensor Cores are specialized processing units designed specifically for deep learning, providing higher training and inference performance compared to FP32 training. They enable rapid computations in areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, text-to-speech conversion, and personalized recommendations. The two most notable applications of Tensor Cores are DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and AI Denoiser for noise reduction.

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

Samsung

Process Size

8 nm

Architecture

Ampere

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

16GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

1563MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

200.1 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

56.64 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

70.80 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

4.531 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

70.80 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

4.622 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

1280

L1 Cache

128 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

60W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 Ultimate (12_2)

CUDA

8.6

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.6

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

250W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

4.622 TFLOPS

Blender

Score

883.68

Vulkan

Score

34563

OpenCL

Score

35144

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Tesla M60

4.922 +6.5%

RTX A1000 Mobile

4.762 +3%

4.622

Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition

4.387 -5.1%

GeForce GTX 1060 5 GB

4.287 -7.2%

Blender

GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile

2829 +220.1%

GeForce RTX 2080 Max Q

1605 +81.6%

883.68

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

442 -50%

GeForce GTX 960

203 -77%

Vulkan

Radeon Pro Vega II Duo

98446 +184.8%

Radeon RX 6700S

69708 +101.7%

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

40716 +17.8%

34563

GeForce 940M

5522 -84%

OpenCL

Radeon RX 5700 XT

77174 +119.6%

Radeon Pro 5700 XT

59644 +69.7%

35144

GeForce GTX 770

17489 -50.2%

FirePro W5000

10308 -70.7%