AMD FirePro D300 vs NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile Comparison

NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile and AMD FirePro D300 are both end-of-life professional workstation GPUs, but they come from completely different eras of hardware design. The RTX A4000 Mobile is an Ampere-generation mobile part from 2021, while the FirePro D300 is a 2014 GCN 1.0 data-center card. The benchmark data shows a massive performance gulf favoring the NVIDIA part, with the RTX A4000 Mobile scoring nearly 5 times higher in OpenCL and over 3.5 times higher in Vulkan, but the FirePro D300 still holds relevance in legacy compatibility and power draw scenarios due to its lower TDP.

FAQ

Q: How much faster is the NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile in OpenCL compute compared to the AMD FirePro D300?

A: The RTX A4000 Mobile scores 97,178 in Geekbench OpenCL, which is 398% higher than the FirePro D300’s 19,515. This means the NVIDIA part delivers roughly 5 times the raw compute throughput in that test.

Q: Does the AMD FirePro D300 have any benchmark where it beats the RTX A4000 Mobile?

A: No. In the head-to-head benchmarks provided, the RTX A4000 Mobile wins both tests: Geekbench OpenCL (97,178 vs 19,515) and Geekbench Vulkan (73,002 vs 19,759). The FirePro D300 has zero wins (winsB: 0) against the RTX A4000 Mobile (winsA: 2).

Q: Which GPU has more memory bandwidth, and by how much?

A: The RTX A4000 Mobile has 384.0 GB/s of bandwidth, while the FirePro D300 has 162.6 GB/s. The NVIDIA part offers 221.4 GB/s more bandwidth, which is a 136% advantage.

Q: What is the transistor density difference between these two chips?

A: The RTX A4000 Mobile’s GA104 chip packs 17,400 million transistors into 392 mm², yielding a density of 44.4M transistors per mm². The FirePro D300’s Pitcairn chip has 2,800 million transistors on 212 mm², giving 13.2M per mm². The NVIDIA chip is over 3 times denser.

Q: Are both GPUs still in production?

A: No. Both are listed as end-of-life products. The RTX A4000 Mobile was released in April 2021, and the FirePro D300 came out in January 2014.

Q: Which GPU supports a newer PCIe interface?

A: The RTX A4000 Mobile uses PCIe 4.0 x16, while the FirePro D300 uses PCIe 3.0 x16. The newer PCIe 4.0 standard offers double the bandwidth per lane compared to PCIe 3.0.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous: the RTX A4000 Mobile is the superior performer in every measured category. Its average benchmark score of 21,379 is 8.9% higher than the FirePro D300’s 19,637, but that gap is misleading because the FirePro D300 only has two benchmark entries (OpenCL and Vulkan) while the RTX A4000 Mobile has nine. Looking at the shared tests, the RTX A4000 Mobile leads by 398% in OpenCL and 269.5% in Vulkan. This is not a close race.

For anyone needing modern compute performance—especially in OpenCL or Vulkan workloads—the RTX A4000 Mobile is the only sensible choice. It offers 8 GB of GDDR6 memory versus 2 GB of GDDR5, supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) versus DirectX 12 (11_1), and has dedicated ray tracing cores (40) and tensor cores (160) that the FirePro D300 completely lacks.

The FirePro D300, however, is not useless. Its 150 W TDP is actually 35 W lower than the RTX A4000 Mobile’s 115 W? Wait—that is incorrect. The data shows the FirePro D300’s TDP is 150 W, while the RTX A4000 Mobile is 115 W. So the NVIDIA part is more power-efficient despite being far faster. The FirePro D300 also has a single-slot form factor and four DisplayPort 1.2 outputs, making it potentially easier to integrate into legacy systems. But for raw performance, the RTX A4000 Mobile wins decisively.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The only two benchmarks shared between these GPUs are Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan, and the RTX A4000 Mobile dominates both.

In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX A4000 Mobile scores 97,178 against the FirePro D300’s 19,515. That is a delta of 398%, meaning the NVIDIA GPU is nearly 5 times faster. This is the largest performance gap in the entire comparison. The RTX A4000 Mobile’s 17.20 TFLOPS of FP32 compute versus the FirePro D300’s 2.176 TFLOPS explains this massive difference—the NVIDIA part has 15.024 TFLOPS more raw single-precision throughput.

In Geekbench Vulkan, the RTX A4000 Mobile scores 73,002, while the FirePro D300 manages 19,759. The delta here is 269.5%, or roughly 3.7 times faster. Vulkan is a modern low-overhead API, and the RTX A4000 Mobile’s support for Vulkan 1.4 versus the FirePro D300’s Vulkan 1.2.170 gives it an architectural advantage beyond raw compute. The NVIDIA GPU’s 8 GB GDDR6 memory at 384.0 GB/s also helps feed its 5120 shading units, compared to the FirePro D300’s 1280 shading units with 162.6 GB/s bandwidth.

There are no reverse wins. The FirePro D300 does not beat the RTX A4000 Mobile in any shared benchmark. The RTX A4000 Mobile also has seven additional benchmarks (Passmark DirectX 10/11/12/9, G2D, G3D, and GPU Compute) where the FirePro D300 has no corresponding data, so no direct comparison is possible. However, the RTX A4000 Mobile’s Passmark G3D score of 14,796 and GPU Compute score of 6,394 indicate strong general and compute performance.

Specification Differences

The most glaring difference is memory capacity: the RTX A4000 Mobile has 8 GB of GDDR6, while the FirePro D300 has only 2 GB of GDDR5. Both use a 256-bit bus, but the RTX A4000 Mobile’s memory clock of 1500 MHz (12 Gbps effective) yields 384.0 GB/s bandwidth versus the FirePro D300’s 1270 MHz (5.1 Gbps effective) for 162.6 GB/s.

The compute units are also vastly different. The RTX A4000 Mobile has 5120 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 80 ROPs. The FirePro D300 has 1280 shading units, 80 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. This translates to a pixel rate of 134.4 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 268.8 GTexel/s for the NVIDIA card, versus 27.20 GPixel/s and 68.00 GTexel/s for the AMD card.

Process technology separates them further. The RTX A4000 Mobile uses Samsung’s 8 nm node with 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die. The FirePro D300 uses TSMC’s 28 nm node with 2,800 million transistors on a 212 mm² die. The NVIDIA chip is 14,600 million transistors larger but only 180 mm² bigger in die area, reflecting its much higher density (44.4M vs 13.2M per mm²).

The RTX A4000 Mobile has no power connectors listed and a TDP of 115 W, while the FirePro D300 has a 150 W TDP and recommends a 450 W power supply. The FirePro D300 is a single-slot card measuring 242 mm (9.5 inches) in length, while the RTX A4000 Mobile’s dimensions are not provided. The NVIDIA card uses PCIe 4.0 x16; the AMD card uses PCIe 3.0 x16.

Architecture Differences

The RTX A4000 Mobile is built on NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture (chip GA104), which is a modern design from 2021. It supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. Critically, it includes 40 ray tracing cores and 160 tensor cores, which are absent from the FirePro D300. The FP16 performance is 17.20 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio with FP32), indicating full-rate half-precision compute. The FirePro D300 has no FP16 data listed.

The FirePro D300 uses AMD’s GCN 1.0 architecture (chip Pitcairn), which debuted in 2012. It supports DirectX 12 (11_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.2.170. GCN 1.0 lacks dedicated ray tracing or tensor hardware, and its FP32 throughput is only 2.176 TFLOPS. The FirePro D300’s FP16 capability is not specified, suggesting it may not support half-precision compute efficiently.

The RTX A4000 Mobile’s memory is GDDR6 with 12 Gbps effective speed, while the FirePro D300 uses GDDR5 at 5.1 Gbps. The NVIDIA card’s 160 tensor cores are designed for AI workloads, and its 40 RT cores enable hardware-accelerated ray tracing—features the AMD card cannot offer. The FirePro D300’s display outputs are 4x DisplayPort 1.2, while the RTX A4000 Mobile’s outputs are listed as “Portable Device Dependent,” reflecting its mobile design origin.

Where Each One Wins

RTX A4000 Mobile wins everywhere performance matters. It dominates in OpenCL (398% faster) and Vulkan (269.5% faster). Its 8 GB GDDR6 memory and 384.0 GB/s bandwidth make it suitable for large datasets, modern game engines, and compute-heavy tasks like machine learning inference (via tensor cores) or ray-traced rendering. The 17.20 TFLOPS FP32 and 17.20 TFLOPS FP16 give it flexibility for both single-precision and half-precision workloads. The 115 W TDP is lower than the FirePro D300’s 150 W, meaning it delivers more performance per watt. For any modern workload—DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.4, or OpenCL—the RTX A4000 Mobile is the clear pick.

FirePro D300 wins only in legacy compatibility and physical design. Its 150 W TDP is higher, so it does not win on efficiency. However, it is a single-slot card with four DisplayPort 1.2 outputs and a 242 mm length, which may fit into older chassis or multi-GPU setups where the RTX A4000 Mobile’s mobile-oriented design (no fixed display outputs) would be problematic. Its GCN 1.0 architecture supports older APIs like DirectX 11.1 and Vulkan 1.2.170, which could be relevant for software that predates the Ampere generation. But its 2 GB VRAM and 162.6 GB/s bandwidth severely limit its usefulness for modern applications. In any head-to-head comparison, the FirePro D300’s only advantage is that it exists in a different form factor—the actual performance data shows it is outclassed by a factor of 3.7 to 5 in compute tests.