NVIDIA Quadro P620: a €25 graphics card that’s still worth buying

After buying an NVIDIA Quadro P1000 for €35 and seeing how well it could work in a small computer, I became curious about trying its little sister, the Quadro P620.

Because comparing the specifications of two graphics cards is one thing; seeing the difference when you actually sit down at your computer is another. And since I enjoy tinkering with hardware and sharing my findings here, when I found a P620 for €25 on Wallapop, I decided to buy it.

Here's the verdict upfront: for that money, I think it's a pretty interesting graphics card, especially if you have an SFF computer that won't accommodate almost any standard card. 

Now I'll tell you how it performs in productivity, image and video editing, and gaming.

What the NVIDIA Quadro P620 offers

The Quadro P620 is a professional NVIDIA graphics card based on the Pascal architecture. It has 512 CUDA cores, 2 GB of GDDR5 memory and 80 GB/s of bandwidth.

In terms of power, it's a long way behind any modern mid-range GPU. But you have to remember what it was designed for.

Its biggest strength is its form factor: low profile and single slot. In other words, it's short and takes up only one expansion slot, making it suitable for machines such as HP ProDesk and EliteDesk SFF computers that cannot accommodate dual-slot cards.

It also draws a maximum of 40 W and needs no additional power cable. That last point is particularly important for these small office computers, which have very limited power supplies.

It has four Mini DisplayPort 1.4 outputs capable of driving four 4K monitors at 60 Hz. It also supports CUDA and has NVENC and NVDEC, dedicated engines for encoding and decoding video, which is quite useful for the kind of work I do.

In short, it's not about raw power, but it packs plenty of useful features into a genuinely tiny card.

Professional performance of the NVIDIA Quadro P620

I installed the P620 in a Lenovo ThinkCentre SFF with an Intel Core i5-7500, 32 GB of DDR4 RAM and a 180 W power supply..

It's a modest computer, but enough for all my current tasks, including office work with advanced Excel, editing images and training videos, and plenty of AI. I wanted to see just how much use you can get out of an older professional GPU.

One thing: there's an important detail compared with my previous review. I tested the P1000 in another computer, an HP EliteDesk with a Ryzen 7 2700 and 24 GB of RAM. So the differences I describe below are impressions from everyday use, not benchmark results obtained under identical conditions.

Image and video editing: Photoshop, Upscayl and Premiere

These are my usual tools, with some occasional Illustrator. 

In Photoshop, the P620 does everything I need. I haven't noticed particularly significant differences from the P1000 in daily use, bearing in mind I no longer work with 10 GB files and 80 layers as I once did.

That makes sense: not every Photoshop operation depends on the GPU or needs huge amounts of graphics memory. For the editing I usually do—website photos and light retouching—the P620 is enough.

Things change with Upscayl, the application I use to upscale images using artificial intelligence models running locally.

Here the difference from the P1000 is quite noticeable. The P620 works and gets the job done, but the processes are considerably slower, at roughly 50% of the speed. This is where I've missed the more powerful card most.

Even though the P1000 is hardly a beast either, it has more CUDA cores and, above all, 4 GB of VRAM versus the P620's 2 GB. That extra memory is extremely useful for certain workloads.

The P620 is useful for upscaling images, much better than almost any integrated GPU that isn't top-tier. I'm using it and, for the price, the result is good enough. But if you're going to spend a lot of time upscaling with Upscayl, personally I'd look for something better.

With Adobe Premiere , I was pleasantly surprised.

The videos I work on are for courses and training, and I almost always export using this configuration: 1080p resolution, using 8-bit H.265/HEVC through NVENC and the speed seems very good to me, I'd say the same as with the P1000.

BTW, NVENC is NVIDIA's hardware video encoder. Basically, it lets the graphics card handle part of the video processing without relying entirely on the CPU.

And on a computer with an i5-7500, being able to use it is an advantage.

Two 4K monitors at 60 Hz, power consumption and noise

One of the Quadro P620's strengths is its connectivity.

NVIDIA specifies that it supports up to four 4K monitors at 60 Hz through its four Mini DisplayPorts. I haven't connected that many, but I have tested two 4K screens running simultaneously at 60 Hz.

One was connected through a Mini DisplayPort-to-USB-C adapter and the other through Mini DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort.

And everything worked perfectly, without a single problem.

It's a really useful feature if you work with several screens, especially considering we're talking about a tiny card that draws a maximum of just 40 W.

As for noise, I have no complaints either. The computer is under my desk and I never hear the P620's fan.

It's true that I usually have music playing quietly in the background, but I haven't noticed any annoying noise from the card.

I haven't measured temperatures or noise levels, so I won't claim it's completely silent. It simply goes unnoticed in my setup.

Local AI: what you can do with 2 GB of VRAM

Now for an interesting case.

Another test I ran was using the P620 to help run artificial intelligence models locally.

Specifically, on my modest machine, I've been working with Qwen3-Coder 30B-A3B, a model with around 30 billion parameters specialized in programming..

Obviously, a model that size won't fit into the P620's 2 GB of memory. Most of the work still has to be loaded into the 32 GB of RAM. However, you can offload a small part of the processing to the graphics card, improving token generation speed by 13%.

It's not a spectacular improvement, but you notice it.

As a side note, my Lenovo lets me keep the integrated Intel HD Graphics 630 enabled at the same time as the NVIDIA card. That gives me the option of using the integrated graphics for the displays and reserving the P620's meager 2 GB for accelerating models.

As I said, it works. But it's also a good demonstration of how limited this card is for local AI.

The P1000's 4 GB are substantially better here, so if your main aim is to run large models, I'd frankly look for a graphics card with much more memory.

Video playback performance

Here we have very good news, because apart from the AV1 codec, which NVIDIA didn't support until the RTX 3000 series, this GPU plays everything:

• H.264.
• H.265.
• 4K at 60 Hz.
• 8- and 10-bit color.

In other words, given how small it is, how little power it uses and how quiet it is, it's an ideal choice for any HTPC whose integrated graphics aren't good enough.

Can you game on the Quadro P620?

I won't lie to you, I've barely played games on it, so I can't give you first-hand results about its gaming performance.

My impression after trying Street Fighter 5, GTA V and a few older games is that it's slightly better than the GTX 750 Ti I pushed to its limits years ago, but worse than the P1000 and the GTX 1050.

For reference, the P620 scores approximately 3,723 points in PassMark G3D Mark, compared with roughly 4,534 for the Quadro P1000. The latter therefore scores about 22% higher in that benchmark, which helps put their graphics performance into perspective.  

And there's another limitation we shouldn't forget: the 2 GB of VRAM. Even when a game doesn't demand much processing power, it may need more graphics memory than is available, particularly if you increase the resolution or texture quality. So don't dream of playing almost any newer game above 1080p. And AAA games at 720p.

So if you're mainly looking for a graphics card to play demanding games at high resolution and frame rates, this isn't your GPU. But then again, there's a reason it costs €25.

More information in my article on   the best cheap graphics cards with a low-profile design, and here's a video showing its performance:

The best and worst of the Quadro P620

The best

• The price: for the €25 I paid, it offers much more than you'd expect.
• The form factor: low profile and single slot, ideal for many SFF computers where other cards won't fit.
• Power consumption: 40 W maximum, with no additional power connector.
• Connectivity: four Mini DisplayPorts and support for up to four 4K screens at 60 Hz.
• NVENC: very useful for exporting H.265 video without putting all the load on the CPU.

The worst

• It only has 2 GB of VRAM, its main limitation for AI and some graphics tasks.
• With Upscayl, the difference is very noticeable compared with the P1000.
• Its performance falls short if you're looking for a graphics card to play demanding games.
• Its four Mini DisplayPort connections may force you to buy adapters if your monitors use other connectors.

Conclusion: is a Quadro P620 worth €25?

Well, yes, especially if you have a small computer with a limited power supply.

For €25, the NVIDIA Quadro P620 lets me breathe new life into any computer without a dedicated GPU, including virtually any SFF, without changing anything else.

What convinces me least is its 2 GB of graphics memory. In everyday use I've barely noticed differences compared with the P1000, but when using AI tools or playing games you'll miss those extra 2 GB.

Also, from what I'm seeing, the P1000 currently costs around €50 on the second-hand market, although you can find better deals. If both cost practically the same, I'd choose the P1000 without hesitation.

That said, for €25 and for an SFF that needs a single-slot graphics card, I think the P620 is a very worthwhile buy..

Overall, I give it 3.5 out of 5, although for an SFF system with space and power restrictions it comes pretty close to a 4.

Because these days the hard part isn't finding a more powerful graphics card. It's finding one that fits in the case, works with your existing power supply and doesn't cost more than the computer itself.

NVIDIA Quadro P620 specifications

Specification	NVIDIA Quadro P620
Manufacturer	NVIDIA
Architecture	Pascal
Year	2018
CUDA cores	512
Graphics memory	2 GB GDDR5
Memory interface	128 bits
Bandwidth	Up to 80 GB/s
PCIe interface	PCI Express 3.0 x16
Maximum power consumption	40 W
Additional power	Not required
Form factor	Low profile, single slot
Video outputs	4 × Mini DisplayPort 1.4
Simultaneous monitors	Up to 4
Supported resolution	Up to 4 × 4K at 60 Hz
Video encoding	NVENC, including H.264 and H.265
Cooling	Active
Price paid	€25 second-hand