AMD FirePro W5170M vs NVIDIA Quadro K1200 Comparison

The AMD FirePro W5170M and NVIDIA Quadro K1200 are both end-of-life professional mobile graphics solutions from the 28 nm era, but they target distinctly different workloads. The data shows a split decision: the NVIDIA Quadro K1200 takes the Geekbench OpenCL crown with a score of 8831, while the AMD FirePro W5170M counters with a decisive win in Geekbench Vulkan, scoring 9050 against the K1200’s 7698. This translates to a 17.6% advantage for AMD in the Vulkan API, making it the clear choice for applications that leverage modern, low-level graphics interfaces. Conversely, the K1200’s 7.8% lead in OpenCL suggests it holds the edge in compute-heavy tasks that rely on that mature API. Their average benchmark scores are close — 8595 for the AMD part and 8265 for the NVIDIA part — but the per-test results reveal that the "better" card depends entirely on the software environment.

Where Each One Wins

The AMD FirePro W5170M is the specialist for Vulkan-based workloads. Its Geekbench Vulkan score of 9050 is not only its best result but also a substantial 17.6% higher than the Quadro K1200’s Vulkan score. This is a significant margin, indicating that the GCN 1.0 architecture on the Tropo chip handles the explicit, multi-threaded nature of Vulkan more efficiently. For users running CAD, scientific visualization, or game engines that have adopted Vulkan, the W5170M provides quantifiably better performance, putting it 1.6% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce MX330 and 1.6% ahead of the AMD Radeon HD 8870M in average score. Its lone benchmark win is a strong one, suggesting a focused advantage in this specific API.

The NVIDIA Quadro K1200 is the winner in OpenCL, a standard widely used for general-purpose GPU computing across fields like video encoding, physics simulation, and financial modeling. Its score of 8831 is 7.8% higher than the FirePro W5170M’s 8140. This performance places it 1.2% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 and 1.7% ahead of the AMD Radeon R9 M360 in average score, showing it competes well above its professional workstation positioning in compute tasks. The K1200 also benefits from a more conventional desktop form factor as a single-slot, 160 mm PCIe card, whereas the W5170M is an MXM module designed for laptops, making the K1200 a more practical upgrade for stationary workstations. For OpenCL-centric pipelines, the K1200 is the clear performer.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs are built on entirely different architectures, which explains their divergent benchmark results. The AMD FirePro W5170M uses the Tropo chip based on the GCN 1.0 architecture, featuring 640 shading units, 40 texture mapping units, and 16 ROPs. It packs 1,500 million transistors onto a 123 mm² die, resulting in a transistor density of 12.2 million per square millimeter. The NVIDIA Quadro K1200, in contrast, is built on the Maxwell architecture with the GM107 chip, which uses 512 shading units, 32 TMUs, and 16 ROPs. It has a larger die at 148 mm² and contains 1,870 million transistors, giving it a slightly higher transistor density of 12.6 million per square millimeter. Both are fabricated by TSMC on a 28 nm process, but Maxwell’s design philosophy emphasizes efficiency per core, while GCN 1.0 focuses on raw parallel throughput.

Memory configurations also differ. The AMD card offers 2 GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus, delivering 72.00 GB/s of bandwidth at an effective speed of 4.5 Gbps. The NVIDIA card doubles the capacity to 4 GB of GDDR5, also on a 128-bit bus, but with a higher effective speed of 5 Gbps, achieving 80.19 GB/s of bandwidth. This extra capacity and bandwidth give the K1200 an advantage in texture-heavy scenes or large datasets that exceed 2 GB. In terms of clocks, the K1200 runs higher out of the box, with a base of 954 MHz and a boost of 1033 MHz, compared to the W5170M’s 900 MHz base and 925 MHz boost. Despite the NVIDIA card’s higher clocks, the AMD card has more shading units and TMUs, resulting in a higher theoretical texture rate of 37.00 GTexel/s versus 33.06 GTexel/s, though the K1200 counters with a slightly higher pixel rate of 16.53 GPixel/s versus 14.80 GPixel/s. The K1200 also has a rated TDP of 45 W and a suggested PSU of 200 W, while the W5170M’s TDP is not listed in the data. The K1200 supports PCIe 2.0 x16 and offers four mini-DisplayPort 1.2 outputs, whereas the W5170M is a portable-device-dependent MXM-A (3.0) module with no fixed display outputs.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The two head-to-head Geekbench tests tell a clear story. In Geekbench OpenCL, the NVIDIA Quadro K1200 wins with a score of 8831 against the AMD FirePro W5170M’s 8140. This is a 7.8% delta in favor of NVIDIA. The K1200’s higher memory bandwidth (80.19 GB/s) and larger 4 GB frame buffer likely contribute to its OpenCL advantage, as compute kernels often scale with memory performance. The W5170M’s higher theoretical FP32 throughput of 1,184.0 GFLOPS versus 1,057.8 GFLOPS is not enough to overcome this, suggesting that memory efficiency matters more in this test.

The Geekbench Vulkan test flips the result decisively. The AMD FirePro W5170M scores 9050, while the NVIDIA Quadro K1200 manages only 7698. This is a 17.6% margin for AMD, a much larger gap than NVIDIA’s OpenCL lead. The W5170M’s GCN architecture is known for its async compute capabilities, which Vulkan can exploit more effectively than Maxwell. The W5170M’s 640 shading units, though slower in clock speed, provide more parallel execution resources for Vulkan’s explicit command queues. This single test result is the strongest differentiator between the two cards, showing that API choice can swing performance by over 25% in either direction.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has a higher average benchmark score?

A: The AMD FirePro W5170M has a higher average benchmark score of 8595, compared to the NVIDIA Quadro K1200’s 8265.

Q: How does the AMD FirePro W5170M perform in Vulkan relative to the NVIDIA Quadro K1200?

A: The AMD FirePro W5170M scores 9050 in Geekbench Vulkan, which is 17.6% higher than the NVIDIA Quadro K1200’s score of 7698.

Q: What is the memory capacity difference between the two cards?

A: The NVIDIA Quadro K1200 has 4 GB of GDDR5 memory, while the AMD FirePro W5170M has 2 GB of GDDR5 memory.

Q: Which card has a higher pixel rate?

A: The NVIDIA Quadro K1200 has a higher pixel rate of 16.53 GPixel/s, compared to the AMD FirePro W5170M’s 14.80 GPixel/s.

Q: Are both GPUs based on the same process node?

A: Yes, both the AMD FirePro W5170M and the NVIDIA Quadro K1200 are fabricated by TSMC using a 28 nm process.

Q: What is the transistor count of each GPU?

A: The AMD FirePro W5170M has 1,500 million transistors, while the NVIDIA Quadro K1200 has 1,870 million transistors on a slightly larger die.

The Verdict

The data presents a clear bifurcation. For professionals whose primary applications are built on Vulkan, the AMD FirePro W5170M is the superior choice. Its 9050 Vulkan score is 17.6% ahead of the K1200, and its 44th percentile ranking among all GPUs is slightly above the K1200’s 43rd percentile. The W5170M’s higher texture rate (37.00 GTexel/s) and greater shading unit count (640) align with Vulkan’s ability to dispatch many small workloads in parallel, making it the better performer in modern game engines and emerging CAD tools.

For compute-intensive tasks using OpenCL, the NVIDIA Quadro K1200 is the winner. Its 8831 OpenCL score is 7.8% ahead, and it offers double the memory (4 GB vs 2 GB) with higher bandwidth (80.19 GB/s vs 72.00 GB/s). The K1200’s higher base and boost clocks (954 MHz and 1033 MHz vs 900 MHz and 925 MHz) also give it an edge in latency-sensitive workloads. Its single-slot, 160 mm form factor with four mini-DisplayPort outputs makes it a more versatile desktop workstation card, whereas the W5170M’s MXM module is confined to specific laptop chassis. Ultimately, the choice hinges on the software stack: Vulkan users should pick AMD, OpenCL users should pick NVIDIA. The average scores are close, but the specialized wins are emphatic.