AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 vs NVIDIA CMP 30HX Comparison

NVIDIA CMP 30HX holds a clear benchmark advantage over the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48, winning both shared tests by double-digit and high-single-digit margins. The data shows the CMP 30HX leads the Pro Vega 48 in Geekbench OpenCL by 21.3% and in Geekbench Vulkan by 8.4%, yet the Pro Vega 48 counters with a higher raw FP32 throughput and a unique Metal score that the NVIDIA card cannot match.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The NVIDIA CMP 30HX dominates the two benchmarks where both GPUs were tested. In Geekbench OpenCL, the CMP 30HX scores 65,199 against the Pro Vega 48’s 53,757, delivering a decisive 21.3% victory. This is not a marginal gap; it is a substantial performance chasm that places the NVIDIA part in a different competitive tier for compute workloads that rely on OpenCL. The CMP 30HX’s lead narrows in Geekbench Vulkan, where it scores 62,484 versus 57,653, a still-comfortable 8.4% advantage. While the Vulkan gap is less dramatic, it remains consistent and favors NVIDIA across both cross-platform APIs.

The Pro Vega 48’s only benchmark win comes in a test the CMP 30HX does not participate in: Geekbench Metal. Here, the AMD card scores 69,010, which is higher than either of the NVIDIA card’s scores in OpenCL or Vulkan. However, because the CMP 30HX has no Metal result, this cannot be treated as a direct head-to-head comparison—it is an Apple-specific API where NVIDIA hardware is absent from the data. For all directly comparable workloads, the CMP 30HX wins 2-0.

Examining the broader context, the CMP 30HX’s average benchmark score of 63,842 places it in the 89th percentile of all GPUs, while the Pro Vega 48’s average of 60,140 lands in the 88th percentile. The CMP 30HX also sits closer to its nearest rivals: its closest competitor, the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT LP, trails by just 0%, and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 is only 0.2% behind. The Pro Vega 48’s nearest rival, the Intel Arc Pro A60, is 0.3% ahead, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is also 0.3% ahead—indicating the Pro Vega 48 is surrounded by faster cards in its performance bracket.

Where Each One Wins

The CMP 30HX is the clear winner for any workload that uses OpenCL or Vulkan. Its 21.3% OpenCL lead makes it the superior choice for general-purpose GPU compute, scientific simulation, and rendering pipelines that leverage this cross-vendor API. The 8.4% Vulkan advantage further cements its position for modern graphics and compute tasks that favor lower-overhead APIs. With an average benchmark score of 63,842, the CMP 30HX also has a 5.8% overall performance edge over the Pro Vega 48’s 60,140, meaning it is the faster card in the majority of test scenarios.

The Pro Vega 48 wins exclusively in Metal-based environments. Its Geekbench Metal score of 69,010 exceeds the CMP 30HX’s best result (65,199 in OpenCL) by 5.8%, and this is the only metric where the AMD part demonstrates superiority. This makes the Pro Vega 48 relevant for macOS ecosystems where Metal is the primary API, but the data does not support any other use case where it outpaces the NVIDIA card. The Pro Vega 48 also offers higher theoretical compute rates—7.373 TFLOPS FP32 versus 5.027 TFLOPS for the CMP 30HX—but in real-world benchmark results, this raw advantage does not translate into higher scores.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs come from fundamentally different design philosophies. The NVIDIA CMP 30HX uses the TU116 chip built on Turing architecture, fabricated on a 12 nm process at TSMC. It packs 6,600 million transistors into a 284 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 23.2M per mm². Turing introduces features like concurrent floating-point and integer execution, which helps explain its strong OpenCL and Vulkan efficiency despite lower raw TFLOPS. The CMP 30HX has no display outputs, confirming its mining-focused design, and runs on a PCIe 1.0 x4 interface—a bottleneck that does not appear to hinder its benchmark performance.

The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 uses the Vega 10 chip based on GCN 5.0 architecture, fabricated on a 14 nm process at GlobalFoundries. This is a much larger and more complex chip: 12,500 million transistors on a 495 mm² die, with a higher transistor density of 25.3M per mm². GCN 5.0 was designed for heavy compute throughput, which is reflected in the Pro Vega 48’s 7.373 TFLOPS FP32 and 14.75 TFLOPS FP16 (2:1) figures—both significantly higher than the CMP 30HX’s 5.027 TFLOPS and 10.05 TFLOPS respectively. However, GCN’s older architecture is less efficient in API-level tests, as the benchmark deltas demonstrate. The Pro Vega 48 is also an integrated graphics processor (IGP) with no dedicated power connectors, designed for portable devices, whereas the CMP 30HX is a dual-slot discrete card requiring a 300 W PSU.

Specification Differences

The memory subsystems diverge sharply. The CMP 30HX uses 6 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, delivering 336.0 GB/s bandwidth at 14 Gbps effective. The Pro Vega 48 uses 8 GB of HBM2 on a massive 2048-bit bus, achieving 402.4 GB/s bandwidth at 1572 Mbps effective. AMD’s memory advantage is 19.8% in bandwidth and 33.3% in capacity, yet this does not overcome NVIDIA’s architectural efficiency in the benchmark results.

Compute unit counts also differ: the CMP 30HX has 1,408 shading units, 88 TMUs, and 48 ROPs, while the Pro Vega 48 has 3,072 shading units, 192 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. The AMD card’s 118% more shading units and 118% more TMUs are evident in its higher texture rate (230.4 GTexel/s versus 157.1 GTexel/s) and FP32 throughput, but its pixel rate is lower (76.80 GPixel/s versus 85.68 GPixel/s). Clock speeds are not directly comparable because the Pro Vega 48 lacks listed base and boost clocks, while the CMP 30HX runs at 1530 MHz base and 1785 MHz boost. API support is nearly identical: both support DirectX 12 (12_1) and OpenGL 4.6, but the CMP 30HX supports Vulkan 1.4 while the Pro Vega 48 is limited to Vulkan 1.3. The CMP 30HX measures 229 mm in length, 111 mm in height, and 35 mm in width, whereas the Pro Vega 48 has no listed dimensions due to its IGP form factor. Release dates are February 24, 2021 for the NVIDIA card and March 18, 2019 for the AMD card.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA CMP 30HX has an average benchmark score of 63,842, which is 5.8% higher than the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48’s 60,140.

Q: How much faster is the CMP 30HX in OpenCL?

A: The CMP 30HX scores 65,199 in Geekbench OpenCL versus 53,757 for the Pro Vega 48, a 21.3% advantage.

Q: Does the Pro Vega 48 win any head-to-head benchmark?

A: No. In the two directly comparable tests (OpenCL and Vulkan), the CMP 30HX wins both. The Pro Vega 48’s only win is in Geekbench Metal, where the NVIDIA card has no result.

Q: What is the memory bandwidth difference?

A: The Pro Vega 48 offers 402.4 GB/s bandwidth via HBM2, which is 19.8% higher than the CMP 30HX’s 336.0 GB/s via GDDR6.

Q: Which GPU has higher FP32 performance?

A: The Pro Vega 48 has 7.373 TFLOPS FP32, which is 46.7% higher than the CMP 30HX’s 5.027 TFLOPS, despite losing in actual benchmarks.

Q: Are both GPUs end-of-life products?

A: Yes, both the NVIDIA CMP 30HX and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 have a production status of end-of-life.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous: the NVIDIA CMP 30HX is the faster GPU in all directly comparable benchmarks. Its 21.3% OpenCL lead and 8.4% Vulkan lead, combined with a 5.8% higher average score, make it the superior choice for any workload that runs on OpenCL or Vulkan. The CMP 30HX also holds a higher percentile ranking (89th versus 88th) and sits closer to its nearest rivals, indicating it is better positioned within its performance class.

The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 should only be selected if the target environment relies exclusively on Metal, where its 69,010 score is the best single result between the two cards. It also offers more memory (8 GB versus 6 GB), higher bandwidth, and nearly double the FP32 throughput, but these specifications do not translate into benchmark victories. For a mining GPU with no display outputs, the CMP 30HX’s compute efficiency is clearly superior to the Pro Vega 48’s older GCN architecture in practice. Choose the CMP 30HX for any non-Metal workload; choose the Pro Vega 48 only for Apple-centric Metal pipelines where the NVIDIA card cannot participate.