AMD Radeon Pro 560X vs NVIDIA Tesla K40c Comparison

The NVIDIA Tesla K40c and the AMD Radeon Pro 560X come from opposite corners of the GPU landscape: one is a dual-slot datacenter compute card, the other an integrated mobile workstation part. Yet when the recorded benchmark data is lined up side by side, the gap between them is narrower in some respects than the raw specifications would suggest, and wider in others. This analysis walks through the measured results, the architectural gulf that separates these two parts, and what the database implies about who should pick which.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The only test where both parts appear in the recorded data is Geekbench OpenCL, and the result is decisive. The Tesla K40c scores 17,468 points against the Radeon Pro 560X's 9,663, an advantage of roughly 81 percent for the NVIDIA card. That is not a marginal win; it is a categorical one, and it aligns neatly with the theoretical throughput figures in the database. The K40c posts 5.046 TFLOPS of FP32 compute against the 560X's 2.056 TFLOPS, a paper advantage of about 145 percent. The measured OpenCL gap of 81 percent lands well below that theoretical ceiling, which raises a question worth investigating: what is holding the K40c back from converting its full compute advantage into benchmark performance?

Memory is one plausible answer. The K40c pairs its 745 MHz base and 876 MHz boost clocks with a 384-bit GDDR5 bus running at 6 Gbps effective, delivering 288.4 GB/s of bandwidth. The 560X, by contrast, manages 94.08 GB/s across a 128-bit bus at 5.9 Gbps effective. Bandwidth favors the K40c by a factor of three, so that alone does not explain the shortfall. Clock behavior may: a large 561 mm² Kepler die at 28 nm simply cannot sustain high frequencies the way a compact 14 nm Polis part can, and the database shows the 560X carries no listed base or boost clock at all, suggesting thermal and power management tuned for a mobile envelope.

The 560X does have additional benchmark entries that the K40c lacks, because it is a card that shipped inside Mac hardware. Its Geekbench Metal score of 18,763 is actually higher than the K40c's OpenCL result, and its Vulkan score of 16,819 sits close behind. But these are different APIs and different tests, and the database does not support cross-API comparison as a head-to-head result. What can be said is that within the 560X's own results, Metal outperforms its OpenCL figure by a wide margin, nearly doubling it, which hints at how much the OpenCL path leaves on the table for this part on Apple platforms.

Context from the broader database reinforces where each card sits. The K40c occupies the 61st percentile versus all GPUs, with its nearest rivals including the AMD Radeon Pro 460 (average score 17,509, essentially a dead heat at 0.2 percent apart), the AMD Radeon Pro 560 (17,551), the AMD Radeon 780M (17,588), and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 (17,639), all clustered within one percent. The 560X sits at the 57th percentile, near the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti (15,063), the AMD Radeon RX 7600 (15,171), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OEM (15,199), and the AMD Radeon 680M (15,270). Notably, the 560X's average score of 15,082, which blends its Metal, OpenCL, and Vulkan results, places it closer to modern integrated parts than to the K40c's cluster.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU wins the shared benchmark?

A: The Tesla K40c wins Geekbench OpenCL with 17,468 points versus 9,663 for the Radeon Pro 560X, an advantage of about 81 percent. It is the only test recorded for both cards.

Q: How do their raw compute capabilities compare?

A: The K40c delivers 5.046 TFLOPS FP32 against the 560X's 2.056 TFLOPS FP32. The 560X also lists 2.056 TFLOPS FP16 at a 1:1 ratio, while the K40c has no FP16 figure recorded.

Q: How much memory does each card have, and how fast is it?

A: The K40c has 12 GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus with 288.4 GB/s of bandwidth. The 560X has 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus with 94.08 GB/s of bandwidth.

Q: Are these cards still in production?

A: No. Both are listed as end-of-life. The K40c was released on October 7, 2013, and the 560X on July 15, 2018.

Q: How do they compare against the wider GPU field?

A: The K40c ranks in the 61st percentile versus all GPUs in the database; the 560X ranks in the 57th percentile.

Q: What are their power requirements?

A: The K40c has a TDP of 245 W and requires one 6-pin plus one 8-pin power connector, with a suggested power supply of 550 W. The 560X has a TDP of 75 W, uses no power connectors, and is classified as an IGP-form-factor part.

Architecture Differences

These two parts could hardly be more architecturally distinct. The K40c is built on the GK180 chip, NVIDIA's Kepler architecture, fabricated on TSMC's 28 nm process. It packs 7,080 million transistors onto a 561 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 12.6 million per square millimeter. The 560X uses the Polaris 21 chip, AMD's GCN 4.0 architecture, fabricated by GlobalFoundries on a 14 nm process, with 3,000 million transistors on a 123 mm² die and a density of 24.4 million per square millimeter. The density difference is stark: nearly double the transistors per area on the newer node, in a die less than a quarter the size.

The rendering resource counts tell the same story of scale. The K40c carries 2,880 shading units, 240 TMUs, and 48 ROPs, producing a pixel rate of 52.56 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 210.2 GTexel/s. The 560X has 1,024 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 16 ROPs, with a pixel rate of 16.06 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 64.26 GTexel/s. Neither card has RT cores or tensor cores; those feature blocks postdate both designs in the recorded lineage.

Feature support diverges in the 560X's favor on paper. It reports DirectX 12 at feature level 12_0 and Vulkan 1.3, while the K40c lists DirectX 12 at feature level 11_0 and Vulkan 1.2.175. Both report OpenGL 4.6. The bus interfaces also differ: the K40c uses PCIe 3.0 x16 while the 560X uses PCIe 3.0 x8, halving the host link width. Physically, the K40c is a dual-slot card measuring 267 mm long with no display outputs, consistent with a compute-only part. The 560X is an integrated-form-factor design whose outputs are listed as portable-device dependent.

The K40c's launch MSRP was 7,699 USD. No comparable figure is recorded for the 560X, which shipped as a component of complete systems. The K40c's lineage runs from Tesla Fermi to Tesla Maxwell, while the 560X belongs to AMD's Radeon Pro Mac 500X series with no predecessor or successor recorded.

The Verdict

The data supports a clear split. For OpenCL compute workloads, the K40c is the only defensible choice of the two: 81 percent faster in the one shared benchmark, with three times the memory capacity, triple the memory bandwidth, and more than double the FP32 throughput. Its cluster of nearest rivals, sitting within one percent of its average score, includes parts like the GeForce RTX 4060 and the Radeon 780M, indicating it still holds a respectable mid-field position in the 61st percentile.

The 560X's case rests on efficiency and platform. At 75 W with no power connectors, it operates in an envelope the 245 W K40c cannot approach. Its stronger API support, DirectX 12_0 and Vulkan 1.3, and its Metal result of 18,763 suggest that on the platforms where it actually ran, in Apple hardware, it delivered meaningfully more than its OpenCL number implies. If the workload is Mac-native graphics or API-modern rendering, the 560X's recorded results look far better than the single head-to-head loss suggests.

Specification Differences

The fields where these two parts differ:

• Chip: GK180 versus Polaris 21
• Architecture: Kepler versus GCN 4.0
• Generation: Tesla Kepler (Kxx) versus Radeon Pro Mac (500X Series)
• Process node: 28 nm (TSMC) versus 14 nm (GlobalFoundries)
• Transistors: 7,080 million versus 3,000 million
• Die size: 561 mm² versus 123 mm²
• Transistor density: 12.6M per mm² versus 24.4M per mm²
• Base clock: 745 MHz versus not recorded
• Boost clock: 876 MHz versus not recorded
• Memory size: 12 GB versus 4 GB
• Bus width: 384 bit versus 128 bit
• Bandwidth: 288.4 GB/s versus 94.08 GB/s
• Shading units: 2,880 versus 1,024
• TMUs: 240 versus 64
• ROPs: 48 versus 16
• Pixel rate: 52.56 versus 16.06 GPixel/s
• Texture rate: 210.2 versus 64.26 GTexel/s
• FP32: 5.046 versus 2.056 TFLOPS
• FP16: not recorded versus 2.056 TFLOPS (1:1)
• TDP: 245 W versus 75 W
• Slot width: Dual-slot versus IGP
• Power connectors: 1x 6-pin plus 1x 8-pin versus none
• Bus interface: PCIe 3.0 x16 versus PCIe 3.0 x8
• Display outputs: none versus portable-device dependent
• DirectX: 12 (11_0) versus 12 (12_0)
• Vulkan: 1.2.175 versus 1.3
• Length: 267 mm versus not recorded
• Release date: October 7, 2013 versus July 15, 2018
• Launch MSRP: 7,699 USD versus not recorded
• Predecessor/successor: Tesla Fermi and Tesla Maxwell versus none recorded

Where Each One Wins

The Tesla K40c wins everywhere compute matters. Its OpenCL score of 17,468 nearly doubles the 560X's 9,663, its FP32 throughput is 5.046 TFLOPS against 2.056, and its 12 GB of memory at 288.4 GB/s dwarfs the 560X's 4 GB at 94.08 GB/s. Any workload that scales with memory capacity, bandwidth, or raw shading resources favors the K40c by wide margins recorded across every relevant field.

The Radeon Pro 560X wins on efficiency and modern API access. Its 75 W TDP, connector-free design, and integrated form factor make it the only option of the two inside a portable or power-constrained system. Its Vulkan 1.3 and DirectX 12_0 support, plus a Metal score of 18,763 that exceeds the K40c's best recorded result, indicate that on its native platforms it punches above what the shared OpenCL test alone would suggest. The data frames this not as a contest with one loser, but as two parts built for different jobs that happen to share a database entry.