AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 vs NVIDIA P102-100 Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The recorded data shows a decisive overall victory for the AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 in direct comparison tests. Across the two benchmark applications used in the database, the AMD part wins both, with a 2-0 record against the NVIDIA P102-100. The margin of victory, however, is not uniform across the two tests, which reveals something about how each card handles different types of workloads.

In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 scores 92,488 points. The NVIDIA P102-100 scores 49,602 points in the same test. That is a delta of 86.5 percent in favor of the AMD card. This is a massive gap, nearly doubling the NVIDIA card's output. The OpenCL test tends to stress raw compute throughput, memory bandwidth, and general-purpose parallel processing, and the MI60's specifications align with a dominant showing in this area. The AMD card has 4,096 shading units, a 4,096-bit memory bus, and 1.02 TB/s of bandwidth. The NVIDIA card, by contrast, has 3,200 shading units, a 320-bit bus, and 440.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The MI60 also has a significant edge in FP32 compute, rated at 14.75 TFLOPS versus 10.77 TFLOPS for the P102-100. The OpenCL result appears to reflect those hardware differences directly.

The Geekbench Vulkan test tells a somewhat different story. The AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 scores 92,444 points, which is essentially identical to its OpenCL score, a difference of just 44 points. The NVIDIA P102-100, however, improves substantially in Vulkan, scoring 67,454 points. That is a 36 percent improvement over its own OpenCL result. Even with that improvement, the MI60 still wins by 37 percent, a comfortable margin but far smaller than the 86.5 percent gap seen in OpenCL. The NVIDIA card's Vulkan driver appears to map better onto Vulkan's lower-level API model, closing some of the distance between the two. Still, the AMD card's lead in raw hardware resources, especially memory bandwidth, keeps it ahead.

Looking at the average benchmark score across all recorded tests, the AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 averages 92,466 points. The NVIDIA P102-100 averages 58,528 points. The database places the MI60 in the 93rd percentile of all GPUs, while the P102-100 sits in the 88th percentile. The MI60's nearest rivals in the database include the NVIDIA RTX A4500, which averages 91,671 points, a delta of 0.9 percent; the NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile at 91,134 points, a delta of 1.5 percent; the AMD Radeon Pro VII at 97,131 points, a delta of -4.8 percent; and the AMD Radeon RX 7900M at 97,487 points, a delta of -5.2 percent. This places the MI60 just slightly below the top of its peer group, but ahead of two NVIDIA professional mobile and workstation parts.

The NVIDIA P102-100's nearest rivals tell a different story. The AMD Radeon PRO V710 averages 58,657 points, a delta of -0.2 percent; the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT averages 58,392 points, a delta of 0.2 percent; the Intel Arc A570M averages 58,239 points, a delta of 0.5 percent; and the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM averages 58,085 points, a delta of 0.8 percent. The P102-100 is essentially at parity with a cluster of mid-range cards, none of which are particularly close to the MI60's performance tier.

Where Each One Wins

The AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 wins in every benchmark category recorded in the database, but the nature of those wins matters for real-world use cases. The OpenCL result, where the MI60 leads by 86.5 percent, points to workloads that rely heavily on compute shaders, general-purpose GPU computing, and high-bandwidth memory access. The MI60's 32 GB of HBM2 memory, its 1.02 TB/s bandwidth, and its 14.75 TFLOPS FP32 throughput make it well suited for large data sets that need to stay resident in memory. The 4,096-bit memory bus is the widest of any card in this comparison, and the HBM2 memory type is designed for exactly this kind of data-heavy parallel workload.

The NVIDIA P102-100 has no wins in the recorded data, but its Vulkan performance relative to its own OpenCL score is noteworthy. In Vulkan, the P102-100 improves by 36 percent over its OpenCL score, while the MI60's Vulkan score is nearly flat compared to its OpenCL score, a difference of only 0.05 percent. This suggests the NVIDIA card's architecture and drivers respond well to Vulkan's explicit control model, which can be an advantage in applications that use Vulkan for rendering or compute. The P102-100 also has a higher pixel rate (134.6 GPixel/s versus 115.2 GPixel/s for the MI60) and a higher texture-to-shader ratio in some respects, with 80 ROPs versus 64. Those attributes do not translate into a benchmark win here, but they indicate the NVIDIA card may be comparatively stronger in rasterization-heavy tasks than in pure compute tasks.

For use-case planning, the data suggests the MI60 is the choice for compute-focused environments such as scientific simulation, machine learning inference, and large-scale data processing. The P102-100, with no display outputs and a PCIe 1.0 x4 interface, is clearly positioned as a compute-only or mining-oriented card, and its lower memory capacity (5 GB) limits the size of data sets it can handle without spilling to system memory. The MI60's 32 GB capacity is a 6.4x advantage, which can be the deciding factor for workloads that require large working sets.

Architecture Differences

The two cards come from different manufacturing generations and use different design philosophies. The AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 is built on the Vega 20 chip, using the GCN 5.1 architecture, and is fabricated on a 7 nm process at TSMC. The NVIDIA P102-100 uses the GP102 chip, based on the Pascal architecture, fabricated on a 16 nm process, also at TSMC. The process node difference is significant: 7 nm versus 16 nm. The MI60 packs 13,230 million transistors into a die size of 331 mm², resulting in a transistor density of 40.0 million per mm². The P102-100 contains 11,800 million transistors on a much larger die of 471 mm², yielding a density of 25.1 million per mm². The MI60 achieves higher density and a smaller physical footprint while housing more transistors.

Memory architecture is another major divergence. The MI60 uses 32 GB of HBM2 memory with a 4,096-bit bus and a bandwidth of 1.02 TB/s. The P102-100 uses 5 GB of GDDR5X memory with a 320-bit bus and a bandwidth of 440.3 GB/s. The MI60's bandwidth is more than double that of the NVIDIA card. The memory clock rates also differ: the MI60 runs at 1000 MHz with 2 Gbps effective data rate, while the P102-100 runs at 1376 MHz with 11 Gbps effective. The GDDR5X memory on the P102-100 has a higher clock speed, but the much narrower bus and smaller capacity limit its overall throughput and capacity.

Compute resources differ as well. The MI60 has 4,096 shading units, 256 texture mapping units, and 64 render output units. The P102-100 has 3,200 shading units, 200 TMUs, and 80 ROPs. The MI60 has 28 percent more shading units and 28 percent more TMUs, while the P102-100 has 25 percent more ROPs. The FP32 compute rating is 14.75 TFLOPS for the MI60 and 10.77 TFLOPS for the P102-100, a 37 percent advantage for AMD. The FP16 numbers are even more lopsided: the MI60 delivers 29.49 TFLOPS at a 2:1 ratio, while the P102-100 delivers only 168.3 GFLOPS at a 1:64 ratio. The NVIDIA card is clearly not designed for FP16 work, while the AMD card offers strong half-precision performance.

Clock speeds favor the NVIDIA card in raw terms. The P102-100 has a base clock of 1582 MHz and a boost clock of 1683 MHz. The MI60 has a base clock of 1200 MHz and a boost clock of 1800 MHz. The P102-100's base clock is 32 percent higher, but the MI60's boost clock is 7 percent higher. The higher base clock on the NVIDIA card likely helps in lightly threaded or latency-sensitive tasks, but the MI60's higher boost ceiling and larger compute resource pool dominate in sustained parallel workloads.

Power and connectivity also differ. The MI60 has a TDP of 300 W and uses a single 6-pin plus a single 8-pin power connector, with a suggested PSU of 700 W. The P102-100 has a TDP of 250 W and uses two 8-pin connectors, with a suggested PSU of 600 W. The MI60 draws more power but delivers substantially more compute throughput per watt in the benchmark results. The MI60 uses a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface, while the P102-100 uses a PCIe 1.0 x4 interface. That is a major difference for data transfer between the card and the host system. The MI60 also has one mini-DisplayPort 1.4a output, while the P102-100 has no display outputs at all, reinforcing its compute-only designation.

The MI60 supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3. The P102-100 supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The NVIDIA card has a newer Vulkan version, which may help explain its relatively better Vulkan benchmark performance. Both cards are end-of-life products. The MI60 was released on November 17, 2018, and the P102-100 on February 11, 2018. The MI60's predecessor is listed as FirePro Data Center, while the P102-100 has no recorded predecessor.

The Verdict

The benchmark data is unambiguous: the AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 is the stronger card in this pairing. It wins both recorded tests, and its average benchmark score of 92,466 is 58 percent higher than the P102-100's 58,528. The MI60's 93rd percentile ranking versus the P102-100's 88th percentile places them in different performance tiers, despite both being end-of-life products.

The choice between the two depends on the workload and the constraints of the deployment environment. The MI60 is the clear pick for any application that needs large memory capacity (32 GB versus 5 GB), high memory bandwidth (1.02 TB/s versus 440.3 GB/s), or strong FP16 compute (29.49 TFLOPS versus 168.3 GFLOPS). It is also the only one of the two with a display output, making it usable in hybrid compute-and-render setups. The PCIe 4.0 x16 interface on the MI60 is far more modern than the PCIe 1.0 x4 on the P102-100, which matters for host-device data transfer in data-heavy workloads.

The P102-100 has no benchmark wins in the recorded data, but it is not without merit. Its higher pixel rate (134.6 GPixel/s versus 115.2 GPixel/s) and higher base clock (1582 MHz versus 1200 MHz) suggest it may hold up better in rasterization-bound tasks, and its 250 W TDP is lower than the MI60's 300 W. Its Vulkan score of 67,454 shows that it can perform respectably when the API plays to its strengths. However, the 37 percent gap in Vulkan and the 86.5 percent gap in OpenCL leave little room for interpretation. The P102-100 also has no display outputs, so it cannot serve as a primary GPU in a typical workstation.

For buyers choosing between these two in the used market, the data supports the MI60 for compute-heavy applications, scientific workloads, and any task that benefits from large on-board memory. The P102-100 is more suitable for scenarios where the host system already has a display-capable GPU and the card is used purely as a compute accelerator with modest memory requirements. The P102-100's cluster of near-parity rivals, including the AMD Radeon PRO V710 and the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT, indicates it competes with mid-range cards rather than high-end accelerators. The MI60, by contrast, sits within 5 percent of the AMD Radeon Pro VII and AMD Radeon RX 7900M, both of which are substantially faster than anything in the P102-100's peer group.

FAQ

Q: Which card wins the Geekbench OpenCL benchmark?

A: The AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 wins with a score of 92,488, compared to 49,602 for the NVIDIA P102-100, a delta of 86.5 percent.

Q: How close is the Geekbench Vulkan result?

A: The MI60 scores 92,444 in Vulkan, while the P102-100 scores 67,454. The MI60 wins by 37 percent, a narrower margin than in OpenCL.

Q: What is the memory capacity difference?

A: The AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 has 32 GB of HBM2 memory, while the NVIDIA P102-100 has 5 GB of GDDR5X, a 6.4x difference in favor of the MI60.

Q: Does the NVIDIA P102-100 have a display output?

A: No, the P102-100 has no display outputs. The MI60 has one mini-DisplayPort 1.4a output.

Q: Which card has higher FP32 compute?

A: The MI60 is rated at 14.75 TFLOPS, while the P102-100 is rated at 10.77 TFLOPS, a 37 percent advantage for the AMD card.

Q: How does the MI60 compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The MI60 averages 92,466 points, which is 0.9 percent ahead of the NVIDIA RTX A4500 and 1.5 percent ahead of the NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile, but 4.8 percent behind the AMD Radeon Pro VII and 5.2 percent behind the AMD Radeon RX 7900M.