AMD FirePro D500 vs NVIDIA Quadro K6000 Comparison

The NVIDIA Quadro K6000 and AMD FirePro D500 are both end-of-life professional workstation graphics cards built on a 28 nm TSMC process, yet they represent fundamentally different design philosophies. The Quadro K6000 is a monolithic high-end compute monster, while the FirePro D500 is a more modestly configured board. Benchmark data shows a clear overall winner, but the specific strengths of each card reveal distinct use cases. The Quadro K6000 holds a decisive lead in the only shared benchmark, the Geekbench Vulkan test, scoring 25,409 against the FirePro D500’s 18,533, a 37.1% advantage. This performance gap is rooted in substantial architectural and specification differences that dictate where each card excels.

FAQ

Q: Which card has a higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA Quadro K6000 has a significantly higher average benchmark score of 19,030, compared to the AMD FirePro D500’s 18,533. This places the Quadro K6000 in the 63rd percentile of all GPUs, while the FirePro D500 sits just below in the 62nd percentile.

Q: What is the performance difference in the Vulkan benchmark?

A: In the Geekbench Vulkan test, the NVIDIA Quadro K6000 scores 25,409, which is 37.1% higher than the AMD FirePro D500’s score of 18,533. This is the only head-to-head benchmark available for direct comparison.

Q: How do their memory capacities and bandwidths compare?

A: The NVIDIA Quadro K6000 features 12 GB of GDDR5 memory with a 384-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 288.4 GB/s. The AMD FirePro D500 has 3 GB of GDDR5 memory on the same 384-bit bus width, but its bandwidth is lower at 243.8 GB/s.

Q: Which card has a higher FP32 (single-precision) compute performance?

A: The NVIDIA Quadro K6000 is far ahead in FP32 performance, rated at 5.196 TFLOPS, whereas the AMD FirePro D500 is rated at 2.227 TFLOPS. This indicates the Quadro K6000 can handle more than double the single-precision floating-point operations per second.

Q: What are the power consumption requirements for each card?

A: The NVIDIA Quadro K6000 has a TDP of 225 W and requires a 550 W power supply, drawing power from 2x 6-pin connectors. The AMD FirePro D500 has a higher TDP of 274 W and a suggested power supply of 600 W.

Q: Are there differences in their display outputs?

A: Yes. The NVIDIA Quadro K6000 provides 2x DVI and 2x DisplayPort 1.2 outputs. The AMD FirePro D500 is equipped with 6x mini-DisplayPort 1.2 and 1x SDI output, offering a different set of connectivity options for multi-display setups.

Where Each One Wins

The benchmark results clearly favor the NVIDIA Quadro K6000 in raw compute performance. Its FP32 throughput of 5.196 TFLOPS is more than double that of the AMD FirePro D500’s 2.227 TFLOPS. This makes the K6000 the superior choice for tasks that are heavily reliant on shader and compute core throughput, such as complex 3D rendering, scientific simulations, and GPU-accelerated data processing. The K6000’s higher pixel rate (54.12 GPixel/s vs. 23.20 GPixel/s) and texture rate (216.5 GTexel/s vs. 69.60 GTexel/s) also indicate a significant advantage in fill-rate-bound workloads, which are common in high-resolution rendering and texture-heavy scenes.

Conversely, the AMD FirePro D500’s strengths lie in its connectivity and specific professional features rather than raw speed. With 6x mini-DisplayPort outputs and a dedicated SDI output, the D500 is designed for environments requiring many simultaneous display connections, such as video walls or broadcast monitoring. Its higher TDP of 274 W, compared to the K6000’s 225 W, suggests it may have been engineered with a different power delivery profile, potentially for sustained operation in specific multi-GPU configurations. However, in the single benchmark where both cards are measured, the Quadro K6000 wins decisively. Data shows the K6000 is the performance leader, while the D500 offers a more specialized I/O profile.

Architecture Differences

The NVIDIA Quadro K6000 is built on the Kepler architecture with the GK110B chip, while the AMD FirePro D500 uses the GCN 1.0 architecture with the Tahiti chip. This represents a fundamental design split. The Kepler architecture, as implemented in GK110B, is known for a large number of CUDA cores and a focus on high compute throughput. The K6000 packs 2,880 shading units, 240 texture mapping units (TMUs), and 48 raster operation units (ROPs). In contrast, the GCN 1.0 architecture in the Tahiti chip is a different design, and the D500 features 1,536 shading units, 96 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. The K6000 has nearly double the shading units and TMUs, which directly contributes to its higher compute and texture rates.

The physical characteristics also differ. The K6000’s GK110B die is larger at 561 mm² and contains 7,080 million transistors, yielding a transistor density of 12.6M / mm². The D500’s Tahiti die is smaller at 352 mm² with 4,313 million transistors, giving a slightly lower density of 12.3M / mm². Both are manufactured by TSMC on the same 28 nm process node. The K6000’s larger die and higher transistor count are indicative of a more complex and powerful compute engine. In terms of API support, the K6000 supports Vulkan 1.2.175, while the D500 supports Vulkan 1.2.170, a minor version difference. Both support DirectX 12 (11_1) and OpenGL 4.6.

Specification Differences

A direct comparison of their specifications reveals the NVIDIA Quadro K6000’s overwhelming advantage in core configuration and memory. The K6000 has 2,880 shading units, 240 TMUs, and 48 ROPs, compared to the FirePro D500’s 1,536 shading units, 96 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. This means the K6000 has 1.875 times the shading units and 2.5 times the TMUs. The memory subsystem also favors the K6000: it offers 12 GB of GDDR5 memory with 288.4 GB/s of bandwidth, while the D500 offers only 3 GB with 243.8 GB/s. Although both use a 384-bit memory bus, the K6000’s higher memory clock (1502 MHz vs. 1270 MHz) and effective data rate (6 Gbps vs. 5.1 Gbps) provide greater throughput.

Clock speeds are another differentiator. The K6000 has a base clock of 797 MHz and a boost clock of 902 MHz, while the D500’s base and boost clocks are not listed. The K6000’s pixel rate is 54.12 GPixel/s and texture rate is 216.5 GTexel/s; the D500’s rates are 23.20 GPixel/s and 69.60 GTexel/s, respectively. The cards also differ in physical dimensions and power requirements. The K6000 is 267 mm long, while the D500 is slightly longer at 279 mm. The K6000 has a TDP of 225 W and requires a 550 W PSU, while the D500 has a higher TDP of 274 W and requires a 600 W PSU. The D500 also lacks listed power connectors, whereas the K6000 uses 2x 6-pin connectors.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The only direct benchmark comparison available is the Geekbench Vulkan test. In this test, the NVIDIA Quadro K6000 scores 25,409, while the AMD FirePro D500 scores 18,533. The delta is 37.1% in favor of the K6000. This is a substantial margin, indicating that the K6000’s architecture and higher core counts translate directly into better performance in a modern, low-level graphics API.

The K6000’s average benchmark score of 19,030 places it alongside rivals like the AMD Radeon RX 6600 (19,036) and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile (19,049), showing it competes with much newer consumer hardware in average terms. The D500’s average score of 18,533 puts it near the AMD Radeon RX 560X (18,626) and Intel Arc A770M (18,383), a lower performance tier. The K6000’s individual benchmark scores are also telling: it reaches 7,932 in Geekbench Metal and 23,749 in Geekbench OpenCL, demonstrating strong performance across multiple compute APIs. The D500 has no comparable Metal or OpenCL scores listed, which limits its cross-API analysis. Ultimately, the Vulkan result is a clear win for the K6000, with the data showing it delivers 37.1% more performance in this specific workload.