AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo vs NVIDIA CMP 40HX Comparison

# AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo vs NVIDIA CMP 40HX

The AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo and NVIDIA CMP 40HX occupy entirely different corners of the GPU market, yet their benchmark scores place them surprisingly close in aggregate performance. The AMD card averages 106,750 across its three Geekbench tests, while the NVIDIA part averages 85,637 across just two — a gap of roughly 24.7% in favor of AMD. However, the CMP 40HX was designed for a singular purpose, and the data reflects that specialization in ways that raw averages don't fully capture.

Where Each One Wins

The head-to-head data shows a clean sweep for the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo, winning both shared benchmarks. In Geekbench OpenCL, the AMD card scores 98,432 against the NVIDIA card's 93,395, a 5.4% advantage. The Vulkan gap is far more dramatic: AMD posts 99,296 versus NVIDIA's 77,879, a 27.5% lead. These are not marginal differences — the Vulkan result represents a dominant performance tier separation.

That said, the NVIDIA CMP 40HX is not without its own sphere of competence. Its 93,395 OpenCL score puts it within striking distance of the AMD card, trailing by only 5.4%. Given that the CMP 40HX draws a fraction of the power — 185 W versus 475 W — and occupies a dual-slot form factor against the AMD card's quad-slot bulk, the NVIDIA part delivers respectable compute per watt in OpenCL workloads. The CMP 40HX also supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4, whereas the AMD card tops out at DirectX 12 (12_1) and Vulkan 1.3, suggesting the NVIDIA part has newer API feature support despite losing the actual Vulkan benchmark.

The AMD card wins on memory capacity and bandwidth decisively: 32 GB of HBM2 on a 4096-bit bus delivering 1.02 TB/s, versus 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus at 448.0 GB/s. For workloads that saturate memory, the AMD card is in a different league. The CMP 40HX, however, has no display outputs at all — it is purely a compute or mining accelerator, while the AMD card offers 1x HDMI 2.0b and 4x Thunderbolt outputs.

Architecture Differences

The architectural divide is stark. AMD's Radeon Pro Vega II Duo uses the Vega 20 chip built on GCN 5.1 architecture, fabricated on TSMC's 7 nm process. It packs 13,230 million transistors into a 331 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 40.0M per mm². The NVIDIA CMP 40HX uses the TU106 chip on Turing architecture, built on TSMC's 12 nm process with 10,800 million transistors spread across a larger 445 mm² die, resulting in just 24.3M transistors per mm². The process advantage is clear: AMD crams more transistors into less silicon.

Core configurations differ dramatically. The AMD card has 4096 shading units, 256 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. The NVIDIA card has 2304 shading units, 144 TMUs, and 64 ROPs — half the shading units, 56% of the texture units, but the same ROP count. This explains the pixel rate parity: AMD's 110.1 GPixel/s versus NVIDIA's 105.6 GPixel/s are nearly identical. Texture rate tells a different story: AMD's 440.3 GTexel/s nearly doubles NVIDIA's 237.6 GTexel/s.

The NVIDIA card brings hardware features AMD's GCN 5.1 lacks: 36 ray tracing cores and 288 tensor cores. These are absent from the AMD specification entirely. The CMP 40HX also has a higher base clock at 1470 MHz versus 1400 MHz, though AMD's boost clock of 1720 MHz edges out NVIDIA's 1650 MHz. Memory technology diverges completely: HBM2 with 2 Gbps effective speed on the AMD side, GDDR6 at 14 Gbps effective on the NVIDIA side. The bus width difference — 4096-bit versus 256-bit — is the primary driver of the 2.3x bandwidth advantage for AMD.

Form factors reflect their intended environments. The AMD card is a quad-slot Apple MPX solution with a suggested 850 W PSU. The NVIDIA card is a dual-slot, 229 mm PCIe 1.0 x4 card with a single 8-pin power connector and 450 W suggested PSU. The NVIDIA card's PCIe 1.0 x4 interface is notably restrictive, though it matters little for mining workloads that don't require high host bandwidth.

The Verdict

The data supports a clear split: the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo is the superior compute and graphics product by every measured benchmark, and its 94th percentile ranking versus 93rd for the NVIDIA card confirms its overall standing. The AMD card leads by 5.4% in OpenCL and 27.5% in Vulkan, with more than double the memory and more than double the bandwidth. Its FP32 throughput of 14.09 TFLOPS versus 7.603 TFLOPS for the NVIDIA card is a 85% advantage, and its FP16 output of 28.18 TFLOPS versus 15.21 TFLOPS represents an 85% lead as well.

However, the NVIDIA CMP 40HX is not meant to compete in that arena. Its launch MSRP of 699 USD (versus 4,399 USD for the AMD card) — mentioned only as a point of record — places it in a different tier entirely. The CMP 40HX has no display outputs, meaning it cannot serve as a workstation graphics card. Its 185 W TDP is 290 W lower than the AMD card's 475 W, and its dual-slot profile fits in standard systems where the quad-slot AMD card would not. For a mining or compute-only task that doesn't require heavy FP32 throughput or large memory pools, the CMP 40HX's OpenCL score of 93,395 shows it is not far behind the AMD card in that specific API. But for anyone needing general-purpose GPU compute, graphics output, or Vulkan performance, the AMD card wins without qualification.

FAQ

Q: Which card has higher peak FP32 performance?

A: The AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo delivers 14.09 TFLOPS of FP32, while the NVIDIA CMP 40HX delivers 7.603 TFLOPS — a 85% advantage for AMD.

Q: Does the NVIDIA CMP 40HX support ray tracing?

A: Yes, it has 36 ray tracing cores and 288 tensor cores. The AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo lists no ray tracing or tensor cores in its specifications.

Q: What is the memory bandwidth difference?

A: The AMD card provides 1.02 TB/s from 32 GB of HBM2 on a 4096-bit bus, versus 448.0 GB/s from 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus for the NVIDIA card — a 2.3x bandwidth advantage for AMD.

Q: Why does the NVIDIA card have no display outputs?

A: The CMP 40HX is listed with "No outputs" in its display specification, indicating it is designed exclusively for compute or mining workloads without any video output capability.

Q: How do the two cards compare in Vulkan performance?

A: The AMD card scores 99,296 in Geekbench Vulkan versus 77,879 for the NVIDIA card, giving AMD a 27.5% lead — the largest margin across any shared benchmark.

Q: Which card has a higher transistor density?

A: The AMD card, built on 7 nm TSMC process, achieves 40.0M transistors per mm² from 13,230 million transistors on a 331 mm² die. The NVIDIA card on 12 nm TSMC achieves 24.3M per mm² from 10,800 million transistors on a 445 mm² die.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The two shared benchmarks tell a story of consistent AMD dominance, but the magnitude varies significantly by API. In Geekbench OpenCL, the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo scores 98,432 against the NVIDIA CMP 40HX's 93,395. The 5.4% delta is meaningful but not overwhelming — it places the NVIDIA card within the same performance neighborhood, particularly considering the NVIDIA part's 185 W power draw and dual-slot size. For OpenCL compute tasks that don't require massive memory bandwidth, the CMP 40HX is a credible performer.

The Vulkan benchmark exposes a much wider gulf. AMD scores 99,296, while NVIDIA manages only 77,879 — a 27.5% deficit. This is not a close contest by any measure. The AMD card's Vulkan score is actually higher than its OpenCL score, suggesting the GCN 5.1 architecture handles Vulkan's explicit API model particularly well. The NVIDIA card's Vulkan score drops 16.6% below its own OpenCL result, indicating that Turing's Vulkan drivers or hardware implementation trails its OpenCL path.

Looking at aggregate scores, the AMD card averages 106,750 across three tests (including its 122,522 Geekbench Metal result, which has no NVIDIA counterpart). The NVIDIA card averages 85,637 across its two tests. The AMD card's nearest rival, the AMD Radeon Pro W6600X, scores 107,342 (0.6% higher), while the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II scores 109,617 (2.6% higher) — meaning the Duo sits just below its single-GPU sibling in average performance, likely due to the 122,522 Metal score being balanced against lower OpenCL and Vulkan results. The NVIDIA card's nearest rival, the AMD Radeon PRO W7600, scores 87,108 (1.7% higher), while the NVIDIA Quadro GP100 scores 87,445 (2.1% higher). The CMP 40HX trails those parts slightly but beats the AMD Radeon PRO W6600 (81,995) by 4.4% and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X (80,959) by 5.8%.

The only benchmark where the NVIDIA card approaches parity is OpenCL, where its 93,395 trails AMD's 98,432 by just 5,037 points. In every other measurable dimension — memory, bandwidth, FP32, FP16, texture rate, Vulkan — the AMD card holds a decisive edge. The CMP 40HX is a specialized tool with a narrow mission, and within that mission it performs admirably. But against the Radeon Pro Vega II Duo, the data shows a consistent and often large performance gap in favor of the AMD solution.