AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT vs NVIDIA Quadro M4000M Comparison

# NVIDIA Quadro M4000M vs AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT

The AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT dominates the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M in every head-to-head benchmark recorded, with Geekbench scores roughly three times higher in both OpenCL and Vulkan workloads. The Quadro M4000M, a Maxwell-generation mobile workstation part from 2015, trails by margins of 66.4% and 62.9% respectively, making this comparison less a contest and more a demonstration of how far GPU technology advanced in the five years separating their releases.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA Quadro M4000M averages 20,480 across its recorded benchmarks, while the AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT averages 18,685. Despite losing every head-to-head test, the Quadro M4000M's average is actually 9.6% higher due to the different benchmark suites used for each card.

Q: How do the two cards compare in raw compute performance?

A: The AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT delivers 7.675 TFLOPS FP32 performance versus 2.593 TFLOPS for the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M, a nearly 3x advantage. The AMD card also offers 15.35 TFLOPS FP16 (2:1 ratio) whereas the NVIDIA card has no recorded FP16 capability.

Q: What memory configurations do these cards use?

A: The Quadro M4000M has 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus with 160.4 GB/s bandwidth. The Radeon Pro 5700 XT uses 16 GB of GDDR6 on the same 256-bit bus width but achieves 384.0 GB/s bandwidth, more than double the NVIDIA card's throughput.

Q: Which card is more power-efficient per transistor?

A: The Radeon Pro 5700 XT packs 10,300 million transistors on a 251 mm² die at 7 nm for a density of 41.0M/mm², while the Quadro M4000M uses 5,200 million transistors on 398 mm² at 28 nm for just 13.1M/mm². The AMD card achieves over 3x the transistor density despite having a 30 W higher TDP.

Q: What are the physical form factor differences?

A: The Quadro M4000M uses an MXM Module slot width with no power connectors and portable-device-dependent display outputs. The Radeon Pro 5700 XT is an IGP (integrated graphics processor) with no display outputs at all, requiring a host system's video output.

Q: Which card supports newer PCIe technology?

A: The Radeon Pro 5700 XT uses PCIe 4.0 x16, while the Quadro M4000M is limited to PCIe 3.0 x16. Both support DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4.

Architecture Differences

The NVIDIA Quadro M4000M is built on the GM204 chip using Maxwell 2.0 architecture, fabricated on TSMC's 28 nm process. It contains 5,200 million transistors spread across a 398 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 13.1M per mm². The GPU operates at a base clock of 975 MHz with a boost of 1013 MHz, and its 5 Gbps effective GDDR5 memory runs at 1253 MHz. The Maxwell architecture provides 1280 shading units, 80 texture mapping units, and 64 ROPs, with no dedicated ray tracing or tensor cores.

The AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT uses the Navi 10 chip with RDNA 1.0 architecture, manufactured on TSMC's 7 nm process. This newer node allows 10,300 million transistors to fit on a 251 mm² die, achieving 41.0M transistors per mm². Clock speeds are substantially higher at 1243 MHz base and 1499 MHz boost, with memory running at 1500 MHz for 12 Gbps effective GDDR6. The RDNA design doubles the shader count to 2560 units and TMUs to 160, while maintaining 64 ROPs. Like the NVIDIA card, it has no ray tracing or tensor cores.

The architectural gulf between 28 nm Maxwell and 7 nm RDNA explains most of the performance difference. The Radeon Pro 5700 XT operates at roughly 48% higher boost clocks while having twice the shading units and TMUs. Its pixel rate of 95.94 GPixel/s exceeds the Quadro's 64.83 GPixel/s by 48%, but the texture rate gap is far larger: 239.8 GTexel/s versus 81.04 GTexel/s, a 196% advantage for AMD. The RDNA card's FP32 throughput of 7.675 TFLOPS is 2.96x the Maxwell card's 2.593 TFLOPS. The AMD card also supports FP16 at 15.35 TFLOPS with a 2:1 ratio, a feature absent from the NVIDIA specification.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The Geekbench OpenCL test shows the Radeon Pro 5700 XT scoring 59,467 against the Quadro M4000M's 19,989, a delta of -66.4% for the NVIDIA card. This 2.97x advantage aligns almost exactly with the FP32 compute ratio, suggesting the OpenCL workload scales directly with raw shader throughput. The Radeon's superior texture rate and memory bandwidth also contribute, but the dominant factor is the doubling of shader units combined with higher clocks.

In Geekbench Vulkan, the Radeon Pro 5700 XT scores 56,593 versus 20,971 for the Quadro M4000M, a -62.9% delta. The Vulkan gap is slightly narrower than OpenCL, indicating the Maxwell architecture handles low-level API overhead reasonably well despite its age. Still, a 2.7x performance deficit leaves no ambiguity about the winner. The Quadro M4000M's Vulkan score is actually higher than its OpenCL score by 982 points, while the Radeon's Vulkan score is 2,874 points below its OpenCL result, hinting that the older NVIDIA driver stack or architecture copes relatively better with Vulkan's explicit model.

Neither benchmark favors the NVIDIA card. The data records zero wins for the Quadro M4000M and two wins for the Radeon Pro 5700 XT. The AMD card's broader benchmark suite also includes Metal (51,272), Passmark DirectX 9 (153), DirectX 10 (76), DirectX 11 (85), DirectX 12 (59), G2D (810), G3D (12,547), and GPU Compute (5,787) scores, though no comparable figures exist for the Quadro M4000M in these tests.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous: the AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT is the superior GPU by every measured metric. It delivers roughly 3x the compute throughput, 2.4x the memory bandwidth, 4x the VRAM capacity, and nearly 3x the texture fill rate. In head-to-head tests, it wins by margins of 66.4% and 62.9%, which are decisive by any standard. The Quadro M4000M's only statistical advantage is its higher average benchmark score (20,480 vs 18,685) and better percentile ranking (65th vs 63rd percentile versus all GPUs), but these figures come from different benchmark suites and do not reflect direct comparison.

Buyers choosing between these cards should recognize that they belong to different eras. The Quadro M4000M, released in August 2015, was a capable mobile workstation part for its time, but its Maxwell architecture and 4 GB GDDR5 memory limit it to lighter workloads. The Radeon Pro 5700 XT, released in August 2020, represents a generational leap in both compute and memory technology. For any modern workload involving large datasets, high-resolution textures, or compute-heavy tasks, the Radeon Pro 5700 XT is the only rational choice based on the benchmark evidence.

Specification Differences

| Specification | NVIDIA Quadro M4000M | AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT |

|---|---|---|

| Architecture | Maxwell 2.0 | RDNA 1.0 |

| Process Node | 28 nm | 7 nm |

| Transistors | 5,200 million | 10,300 million |

| Die Size | 398 mm² | 251 mm² |

| Transistor Density | 13.1M / mm² | 41.0M / mm² |

| Base Clock | 975 MHz | 1243 MHz |

| Boost Clock | 1013 MHz | 1499 MHz |

| Memory Clock | 1253 MHz (5 Gbps effective) | 1500 MHz (12 Gbps effective) |

| Memory Size | 4 GB | 16 GB |

| Memory Type | GDDR5 | GDDR6 |

| Memory Bus | 256 bit | 256 bit |

| Memory Bandwidth | 160.4 GB/s | 384.0 GB/s |

| Shading Units | 1280 | 2560 |

| TMUs | 80 | 160 |

| ROPs | 64 | 64 |

| Pixel Rate | 64.83 GPixel/s | 95.94 GPixel/s |

| Texture Rate | 81.04 GTexel/s | 239.8 GTexel/s |

| FP32 | 2.593 TFLOPS | 7.675 TFLOPS |

| FP16 | N/A | 15.35 TFLOPS (2:1) |

| TDP | 100 W | 130 W |

| Slot Width | MXM Module | IGP |

| Suggested PSU | N/A | 300 W |

| Bus Interface | PCIe 3.0 x16 | PCIe 4.0 x16 |

| Display Outputs | Portable Device Dependent | No outputs |

| Release Date | 2015-08-17 | 2020-08-03 |

Where Each One Wins

The AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT wins in every benchmark category where direct comparison exists. Its Geekbench OpenCL score of 59,467 crushes the Quadro M4000M's 19,989, making it the clear choice for OpenCL compute workloads such as scientific simulation, image processing, or machine learning inference. Its Vulkan score of 56,593 versus 20,971 similarly positions it for modern game engines and Vulkan-based rendering applications. The 16 GB GDDR6 frame buffer with 384.0 GB/s bandwidth enables working with large 3D scenes, high-resolution textures, or multi-monitor setups without memory pressure, while the Quadro's 4 GB GDDR5 at 160.4 GB/s would bottleneck on such tasks.

The NVIDIA Quadro M4000M's advantages are more circumstantial. Its MXM Module form factor makes it suitable for laptops or systems designed around that standard, whereas the Radeon Pro 5700 XT's IGP design requires a motherboard with integrated graphics support. The Quadro's 100 W TDP is 30 W lower than the Radeon's 130 W, which matters in thermally constrained mobile chassis. Its portable-device-dependent display outputs give it flexibility in systems where the GPU directly drives panels, unlike the Radeon's complete lack of display outputs. The Quadro also holds a marginally higher percentile ranking (65th vs 63rd) and a higher average benchmark score (20,480 vs 18,685), though these reflect its benchmark set rather than true performance parity.

For users whose workloads involve OpenCL or Vulkan compute, the Radeon Pro 5700 XT is the only defensible choice. For legacy systems requiring an MXM module with integrated display output and lower power draw, the Quadro M4000M retains niche relevance. The five-year gap in release dates and the accompanying architectural evolution make this a mismatch in raw capability, and the data reflects that reality without exception.