AMD Radeon Pro 455 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN and the AMD Radeon Pro 455 come from different eras and different design philosophies, but the recorded database numbers put them closer together than their specs suggest. The TITAN, a desktop flagship built on the GK110 die, carries an average benchmark score of 14373 against 12831 for the Pro 455, a mobile-oriented MXM part. Yet the head-to-head results split two wins to one in AMD's favor, and the margins swing dramatically depending on the API being exercised. This comparison walks through those results and explains what the underlying silicon says about each card's strengths.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The Geekbench OpenCL result is the single most lopsided number in this matchup, and it belongs to the TITAN. The GK110 card scores 24873 against 10336 for the Pro 455, a delta of 140.6 percent in NVIDIA's favor. That is not a narrow win; it is a rout in the one test that most directly stresses raw compute throughput, and it aligns neatly with the hardware gap: the TITAN delivers 4.709 TFLOPS of FP32 against 1,313.3 GFLOPS for the Pro 455. OpenCL workloads that scale with shader count and memory bandwidth clearly favor the big Kepler die, which fields 2688 shading units, a 384-bit bus, and 288.4 GB/s of bandwidth compared to 768 units, a 128-bit bus, and 81.28 GB/s.

Metal tells the opposite story. Here the Pro 455 posts 15916 while the TITAN manages 8218, a 48.4 percent win for the AMD part. The Pro 455 supports DirectX 12 at the 12_0 feature level and Vulkan 1.3, while the TITAN is capped at 12 (11_0) and Vulkan 1.2.175. That API gap matters in modern graphics tests: the newer GCN 4.0 architecture with its full DX12 feature level support extracts far more from a Metal-style pipeline than the Kepler design can, despite the massive deficit in raw specification.

Vulkan lands in between but still favors AMD. The Pro 455 scores 12240 against 10027 for the TITAN, a delta of 18.1 percent. Again, the Vulkan 1.3 support on the Baffin chip appears to pay off, while the TITAN's Vulkan 1.2.175 support leaves it on an older code path.

The aggregate picture is therefore genuinely mixed: the TITAN wins one test by 140.6 percent, the Pro 455 wins two, by 48.4 and 18.1 percent respectively. The average benchmark scores, 14373 versus 12831, still favor the TITAN overall, roughly a 12 percent edge, but that average is dominated by the enormous OpenCL result.

Context from the wider database reinforces how close these two sit in the grand scheme. The TITAN lands in the 56th percentile of all GPUs; the Pro 455 sits in the 52nd. The TITAN's nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 (14385 average, a delta of just -0.1 percent), the AMD Radeon Vega 11 (14352, 0.1 percent), the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M (14404, -0.2 percent), and the Intel Iris Xe MAX Graphics (14315, 0.4 percent). The Pro 455's neighborhood includes the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 (12830, a dead-even delta of 0), the AMD FirePro W5100 (12847, -0.1 percent), the AMD Radeon 740M (12870, -0.3 percent), and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 (12773, 0.5 percent). Two clusters barely 1500 points apart, with each card essentially indistinguishable from its own peer group.

Where Each One Wins

The TITAN is the clear pick for compute-bound OpenCL workloads. General-purpose GPU computing, number crunching, and any pipeline that leans on FP32 throughput and memory bandwidth will favor it overwhelmingly, given the 140.6 percent OpenCL margin and the 288.4 GB/s bandwidth figure. Its 6 GB of GDDR5 also triples the Pro 455's 2 GB frame buffer, which matters for datasets and workloads that exceed a smaller allocation. Applications bound by texture rate or pixel rate also favor the NVIDIA card on paper: 196.2 GTexel/s and 49.06 GPixel/s against 41.04 GTexel/s and 13.68 GPixel/s for the AMD part.

The Pro 455 wins wherever modern graphics API support is decisive. Its Metal win of 48.4 percent and Vulkan win of 18.1 percent both track with its DirectX 12_0 feature level and Vulkan 1.3 support, versus the TITAN's 11_0 level and Vulkan 1.2.175. Workloads written against newer API feature sets, particularly on the Apple-side Metal ecosystem where the Pro 455's Mac-focused generation originates, extract far more from the smaller chip. It also runs at a 35 W TDP versus the TITAN's 250 W, needs no external power connectors where the TITAN requires one 6-pin and one 8-pin, and comes as an MXM module with a PCIe 3.0 x8 interface rather than a dual-slot desktop card. Power-constrained and thermally constrained systems are simply not a TITAN option.

A note on FP16: the Pro 455 lists 1,313.3 GFLOPS at a 1:1 rate with FP32, while the TITAN has no recorded FP16 figure. Half-precision workloads are therefore only documented on the AMD side.

Architecture Differences

These are two fundamentally different silicon strategies separated by a process gap and a market gap. The TITAN's GK110 die is a 28 nm TSMC part measuring 561 mm² with 7,080 million transistors, giving a density of 12.6M per mm². The Pro 455's Baffin chip is a 14 nm GlobalFoundries part measuring 123 mm² with 3,000 million transistors, more than double the density at 24.4M per mm². The TITAN's die is more than four times the area, but the Pro 455's process advantage lets it pack transistors far more tightly and operate at dramatically lower power.

The resource counts reflect the desktop-flagship versus mobile dichotomy. The TITAN fields 2688 shading units, 224 TMUs, and 48 ROPs; the Pro 455 has 768 units, 48 TMUs, and 16 ROPs. NVIDIA's Kepler architecture drives those units at an 836 MHz base and 876 MHz boost clock with memory running at 1502 MHz (6 Gbps effective). The Pro 455's core clocks are not recorded in the database, but its memory runs at 1270 MHz (5.1 Gbps effective). The TITAN launched on 2013-02-18 at a launch MSRP of 999 USD, as part of the GeForce 700 generation, succeeding the GeForce 600 line and preceding the GeForce 900 series. The Pro 455 arrived on 2016-10-29 as part of the Radeon Pro Mac 400 Series, with no recorded predecessor, successor, or launch MSRP. Both are now end-of-life.

Display connectivity differs as much as anything else. The TITAN offers two DVI outputs, one HDMI 1.4a, and one DisplayPort 1.2 across its dual-slot 267 mm by 111 mm by 38 mm frame. The Pro 455's outputs are portable-device dependent, as befits an MXM module. Neither card has RT cores or tensor cores, so hardware ray tracing and dedicated AI acceleration are absent from both feature sets. OpenGL support is identical at 4.6.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU is faster overall?

A: By average benchmark score, the TITAN leads 14373 to 12831, roughly a 12 percent edge. However, the Pro 455 wins two of three individual head-to-head tests, so the answer depends on the workload.

Q: Why does the Pro 455 win in Metal despite much weaker specs?

A: The Pro 455 supports DirectX 12 at the 12_0 feature level and Vulkan 1.3, while the TITAN is limited to 12 (11_0) and Vulkan 1.2.175. The newer API support lets the GCN 4.0 architecture overcome its hardware deficit, producing a 15916 to 8218 Metal win.

Q: How big is the compute gap in OpenCL?

A: The TITAN scores 24873 versus 10336, a 140.6 percent advantage. This tracks with its 4.709 TFLOPS of FP32 against the Pro 455's 1,313.3 GFLOPS, and its 288.4 GB/s of bandwidth against 81.28 GB/s.

Q: How do they compare against other GPUs in the database?

A: The TITAN sits in the 56th percentile and trades blows with cards like the Radeon RX Vega 11 (14385 average, -0.1 percent) and the GTX 965M (14404, -0.2 percent). The Pro 455 sits in the 52nd percentile and matches the GTX 590 (12830, 0 percent) and the FirePro W5100 (12847, -0.1 percent).

Q: What is the power consumption difference?

A: The TITAN has a 250 W TDP and requires one 6-pin plus one 8-pin power connector, with a suggested 600 W PSU. The Pro 455 has a 35 W TDP, uses no power connectors, and comes as an MXM module.

Q: How much memory does each card have?

A: The TITAN carries 6 GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus with 288.4 GB/s of bandwidth. The Pro 455 has 2 GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus with 81.28 GB/s.

The Verdict

The data supports a clean split. Choose the TITAN for OpenCL compute, memory-hungry workloads that need more than 2 GB, and any task that scales with raw shading, texturing, or pixel throughput. Its 140.6 percent OpenCL win is the decisive number, and its percentile placement and average score are both higher. Choose the Pro 455 for modern-API graphics work, particularly Metal and Vulkan, where its 48.4 and 18.1 percent wins reflect genuinely newer software support, and for any power- or space-constrained system given its 35 W TDP and MXM form factor. Neither card is competitive at the high end today, both are end-of-life, but within this pairing the TITAN remains the raw-performance choice and the Pro 455 the efficiency and API-modernity choice.