AMD FirePro S7150 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and AMD FirePro S7150 represent two distinct eras and purposes in GPU design, with the former being a high-end consumer gaming card built on Turing architecture and the latter a server-oriented compute accelerator based on GCN 3.0. The benchmark data available shows a clear performance separation, with the RTX 2080 Ti dominating the two shared tests, but the FirePro S7150’s design philosophy targets different workloads. This analysis examines where each card wins, the architectural chasms between them, and what the numbers indicate for potential buyers.

Where Each One Wins

The data is unequivocal in the two head-to-head benchmarks available: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti wins both. In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 2080 Ti scores 128,171 against the FirePro S7150’s 26,543, a delta of 382.9% in favor of NVIDIA. Similarly, in Geekbench Vulkan, the RTX 2080 Ti posts 132,930 versus 29,690 for the AMD card, a 347.7% advantage. These are not marginal victories; they are order-of-magnitude differences that reflect the generational and architectural leap between the two products.

However, the FirePro S7150’s domain is not consumer benchmarks. Its specifications list "No outputs," indicating it is a compute-only server card, likely intended for virtualization, cloud rendering, or datacenter compute tasks where display connectivity is irrelevant. The RTX 2080 Ti, by contrast, offers a full display output suite including HDMI 2.0, three DisplayPort 1.4a connections, and a USB Type-C port. The wins for the AMD card would theoretically come in scenarios that favor its GCN architecture’s compute characteristics, but the provided data does not include any such tests. The RTX 2080 Ti also holds a percentile rank of 75 among all GPUs, compared to the FirePro S7150’s 73, indicating that even in the broader database context, NVIDIA’s card sits higher in the performance distribution.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gap between these two cards is substantial. The RTX 2080 Ti is built on NVIDIA’s Turing architecture using a 12 nm process at TSMC, packing 18,600 million transistors into a 754 mm² die. This yields a transistor density of 24.7M per mm². The FirePro S7150 uses AMD’s GCN 3.0 architecture on a 28 nm process, also at TSMC, with 5,000 million transistors on a 366 mm² die, resulting in a density of 13.7M per mm². The process node difference alone explains much of the performance delta, with the RTX 2080 Ti’s smaller node allowing for more transistors and higher clock speeds.

The compute resources diverge sharply. The RTX 2080 Ti features 4,352 shading units, 272 texture mapping units, and 88 raster output units. It also includes 68 ray tracing cores and 544 tensor cores, which the FirePro S7150 lacks entirely. The AMD card offers 2,048 shading units, 128 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. Clock speeds differ as well: the RTX 2080 Ti has a base clock of 1350 MHz and a boost of 1545 MHz, while the FirePro S7150 has no listed base or boost clocks, only a memory clock of 1250 MHz. The memory subsystems are also different generations: the RTX 2080 Ti uses 11 GB of GDDR6 on a 352-bit bus, achieving 616.0 GB/s bandwidth, whereas the FirePro S7150 uses 8 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus, yielding 160.0 GB/s.

The RTX 2080 Ti also supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the FirePro S7150 only supports DirectX 12 (12_0). In terms of Vulkan, the NVIDIA card supports version 1.4, while AMD’s card supports 1.2.170. The power profiles reflect their different use cases: the RTX 2080 Ti has a TDP of 250 W, requires dual-slot width, and needs two 8-pin power connectors plus a 600 W suggested PSU, while the FirePro S7150 has a 150 W TDP, is single-slot, uses one 6-pin connector, and suggests a 450 W PSU. The RTX 2080 Ti’s dimensions are 267 mm in length, 116 mm in height, and 35 mm in width, compared to the FirePro S7150’s 241 mm length and 111 mm height, with no width listed.

The Verdict

Based strictly on the data, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is the superior performer in every measurable category. Its average benchmark score of 29,783 is higher than the FirePro S7150’s 28,117, and it holds a wider lead in the head-to-head tests. The RTX 2080 Ti’s nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile with an average score of 29,928 (delta -0.5%), the RTX 3070 Ti at 29,945 (delta -0.5%), and the AMD Radeon RX 6800 at 30,095 (delta -1%). The FirePro S7150’s closest competitors are the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti at 28,020 (delta 0.3%), the AMD Radeon Pro W5500X at 27,973 (delta 0.5%), and the AMD Radeon RX 7800M at 27,883 (delta 0.8%). This places the RTX 2080 Ti in a performance tier above the FirePro S7150, which sits closer to older or lower-tier cards.

For a buyer choosing between these two, the decision is driven by workload. The RTX 2080 Ti is designed for consumer gaming and general graphics, with ray tracing and tensor cores that enable features like DLSS and real-time ray tracing. It has display outputs and a robust API feature set. The FirePro S7150 is a server compute card with no display outputs, targeting datacenter environments where raw compute throughput per watt might be more critical than peak performance. The data shows the RTX 2080 Ti is 382.9% ahead in OpenCL and 347.7% ahead in Vulkan, which are significant margins. If the workload is gaming or desktop graphics, the RTX 2080 Ti is the only viable choice. If the workload is server-side compute with no need for graphics output, the FirePro S7150’s lower TDP of 150 W and single-slot form factor could be advantageous, but the performance gap is so large that even that efficiency argument is weakened by the numbers.

FAQ

Q: Which card has higher memory bandwidth?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti has a memory bandwidth of 616.0 GB/s, which is significantly higher than the AMD FirePro S7150’s 160.0 GB/s.

Q: Does the AMD FirePro S7150 support ray tracing?

A: No, the FirePro S7150 does not list any ray tracing cores, while the RTX 2080 Ti includes 68 RT cores.

Q: What is the difference in shading units between the two cards?

A: The RTX 2080 Ti has 4,352 shading units, while the FirePro S7150 has 2,048, giving NVIDIA’s card more than double the shading capacity.

Q: Which card has a higher average benchmark score?

A: The RTX 2080 Ti has an average benchmark score of 29,783, compared to the FirePro S7150’s 28,117, a difference of roughly 5.9%.

Q: Are both cards end-of-life products?

A: Yes, both the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and the AMD FirePro S7150 are listed with a production status of "End-of-life."

Q: What is the process node difference?

A: The RTX 2080 Ti is built on a 12 nm process, while the FirePro S7150 uses a 28 nm process, with the smaller node contributing to the NVIDIA card’s higher transistor count and density.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The only two shared benchmarks between these cards are Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan, and both show overwhelming wins for the RTX 2080 Ti. In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 2080 Ti scores 128,171 against the FirePro S7150’s 26,543. The delta of 382.9% means the NVIDIA card delivers nearly five times the compute performance in this test. This is consistent with the architectural advantages: the RTX 2080 Ti has more than twice the shading units, a larger memory bus, and higher bandwidth, all of which contribute to OpenCL workloads that stress raw compute and memory throughput.

In Geekbench Vulkan, the RTX 2080 Ti scores 132,930, while the FirePro S7150 manages 29,690, a delta of 347.7%. Vulkan is a low-overhead API that benefits from efficient driver implementations and hardware features. The RTX 2080 Ti’s support for Vulkan 1.4, compared to the FirePro S7150’s Vulkan 1.2.170, indicates a more modern feature set. The score difference here is slightly smaller than in OpenCL but still represents a massive performance gap.

These results are not close. The RTX 2080 Ti’s average benchmark score of 29,783 places it in the 75th percentile of all GPUs, while the FirePro S7150’s 28,117 places it in the 73rd percentile. While the percentile difference is small, the head-to-head deltas reveal the true scale of the performance chasm. The FirePro S7150’s nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, has an average score of 28,020, which is only 0.3% behind the AMD card. This shows that the FirePro S7150 is competitive with older high-end consumer cards, but it is not in the same league as the RTX 2080 Ti. The data paints a clear picture: for any workload that can utilize the RTX 2080 Ti’s features, it is the definitive winner in this comparison.