AMD Radeon Pro VII vs NVIDIA CMP 30HX Comparison

FAQ

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

A: The AMD Radeon Pro VII delivers 13.06 TFLOPS FP32 and 26.11 TFLOPS FP16 (2:1), while the NVIDIA CMP 30HX delivers 5.027 TFLOPS FP32 and 10.05 TFLOPS FP16 (2:1). In recorded Geekbench OpenCL and Vulkan tests, the Radeon Pro VII leads by 38.3% and 48.6%, respectively.

Q: Which card has more memory bandwidth?

A: The Radeon Pro VII uses 16 GB of HBM2 on a 4096-bit bus, achieving 1.02 TB/s. The CMP 30HX uses 6 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, achieving 336.0 GB/s. The bandwidth difference is substantial, favoring the AMD card nearly threefold.

Q: Are these cards suitable for gaming?

A: The Radeon Pro VII supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3, with six mini-DisplayPort 1.4a outputs. The CMP 30HX has no display outputs at all, making it unsuitable for any visual output task. Its Vulkan 1.4 support and DirectX 12 (12_1) are present, but without outputs, it cannot drive a monitor.

Q: What is the power draw difference?

A: The Radeon Pro VII has a TDP of 250 W with a suggested PSU of 600 W and uses 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin connectors. The CMP 30HX has a TDP of 125 W with a suggested PSU of 300 W and uses a single 8-pin connector. The CMP 30HX draws half the power.

Q: Which card was released later?

A: The Radeon Pro VII released on 2020-05-12, while the CMP 30HX released on 2021-02-24, nearly ten months later. Both are now end-of-life products.

Q: How do their average benchmark scores compare to their closest rivals?

A: The Radeon Pro VII averages 97131, sitting 0.4% below the AMD Radeon RX 7900M (97487) and 4.7% below the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 (101872), while leading the AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 (92466) by 5% and the NVIDIA RTX A4500 (91671) by 6%. The CMP 30HX averages 63842, essentially tied with the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT LP (63830, 0% delta) and the AMD Radeon RX 7600M (63775, 0.1% delta), while trailing the AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 (64212) by 0.6%.

The Verdict

The benchmark data presents a clear separation in purpose and capability. The AMD Radeon Pro VII wins both recorded head-to-head tests, with a 38.3% lead in OpenCL and a 48.6% lead in Vulkan. Its average benchmark score of 97131 places it in the 93rd percentile of all GPUs, while the CMP 30HX sits at the 89th percentile with an average of 63842. For any workload requiring compute throughput, memory bandwidth, or display output, the Radeon Pro VII is the only viable choice between these two.

The NVIDIA CMP 30HX is a mining-specific card with no display outputs. Its 125 W TDP and 300 W suggested PSU make it far more efficient in power draw, and its 6 GB GDDR6 memory is adequate for mining workloads. However, its 5.027 TFLOPS FP32 is less than half of the Radeon Pro VII's 13.06 TFLOPS. The data indicates the CMP 30HX trades compute capability for lower power consumption and a smaller physical footprint (229 mm length versus 305 mm). Users needing a general-purpose GPU should avoid the CMP 30HX entirely; users building a dedicated mining rig with strict power limits might consider it, but the performance gap in every recorded benchmark makes the Radeon Pro VII the superior choice unless power constraints are absolute.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The recorded data includes two direct comparisons. In Geekbench OpenCL, the AMD Radeon Pro VII scores 90148 against the NVIDIA CMP 30HX's 65199, a delta of 38.3%. In Geekbench Vulkan, the Radeon Pro VII scores 92862 against 62484, a delta of 48.6%. The Radeon Pro VII wins both tests, giving it a 2-0 record in head-to-head matchups.

The Vulkan gap is particularly notable. A 48.6% lead in Vulkan suggests the Radeon Pro VII's architecture handles compute workloads with significantly greater efficiency per clock or per shader. The OpenCL gap of 38.3% is slightly smaller but still substantial. Looking at the rival context, the Radeon Pro VII's OpenCL score of 90148 is within 5% of the AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 (92466) and 6% of the NVIDIA RTX A4500 (91671), both professional-grade cards. The CMP 30HX's OpenCL score of 65199 is nearly identical to its closest rivals, the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT LP (63830) and AMD Radeon RX 7600M (63775), which are both consumer mobile or low-power parts.

The CMP 30HX's Vulkan score of 62484 is lower than its OpenCL score, whereas the Radeon Pro VII's Vulkan score of 92862 is higher than its OpenCL score. This divergence indicates that the AMD card scales better across different compute APIs, while the NVIDIA card performs slightly worse in Vulkan compared to OpenCL. For workloads that rely on Vulkan, the Radeon Pro VII's advantage widens by over 10 percentage points compared to OpenCL.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ across nearly every major specification. The AMD Radeon Pro VII uses a Vega 20 chip on a 7 nm process from TSMC, while the NVIDIA CMP 30HX uses a TU116 chip on a 12 nm process, also from TSMC. The Radeon Pro VII contains 13,230 million transistors on a 331 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 40.0M per mm². The CMP 30HX contains 6,600 million transistors on a 284 mm² die, with a density of 23.2M per mm². The Radeon Pro VII has nearly double the transistor count and a higher density.

Memory configurations diverge sharply. The Radeon Pro VII has 16 GB of HBM2 with a 4096-bit bus and 1.02 TB/s bandwidth. The CMP 30HX has 6 GB of GDDR6 with a 192-bit bus and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth. Clock speeds favor the NVIDIA card: the CMP 30HX has a base clock of 1530 MHz and boost of 1785 MHz, while the Radeon Pro VII has a base of 1400 MHz and boost of 1700 MHz. The CMP 30HX also has faster memory clocks at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective) versus 1000 MHz (2 Gbps effective) on the Radeon Pro VII.

Compute unit counts show the AMD card's advantage. The Radeon Pro VII has 3840 shading units, 240 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. The CMP 30HX has 1408 shading units, 88 TMUs, and 48 ROPs. Pixel rates are 108.8 GPixel/s for AMD versus 85.68 GPixel/s for NVIDIA. Texture rates are 408.0 GTexel/s versus 157.1 GTexel/s. The Radeon Pro VII has a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface, while the CMP 30HX uses PCIe 1.0 x4, a severe bottleneck for data transfer.

Physical specifications also differ. The Radeon Pro VII is 305 mm long, while the CMP 30HX is 229 mm long. Both are dual-slot and 111 mm high, but the CMP 30HX has a listed width of 35 mm. The Radeon Pro VII has six mini-DisplayPort 1.4a outputs; the CMP 30HX has no outputs. Power delivery differs: the Radeon Pro VII requires 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin, the CMP 30HX only 1x 8-pin.

Architecture Differences

The AMD Radeon Pro VII is built on GCN 5.1 architecture (Vega 20), while the NVIDIA CMP 30HX uses the Turing architecture (TU116). These are fundamentally different designs with different strengths. GCN 5.1 is a compute-oriented architecture that scales well with raw shader counts and memory bandwidth. The Radeon Pro VII leverages this with 3840 shading units and a 4096-bit HBM2 interface, which explains its massive bandwidth advantage of 1.02 TB/s versus 336.0 GB/s.

The Turing architecture in the CMP 30HX is more efficient per transistor for gaming workloads, but this card is stripped of display outputs, indicating a mining-specific variant. Neither card includes ray tracing cores or tensor cores; both rely on traditional shader-based compute. The Radeon Pro VII supports Vulkan 1.3, while the CMP 30HX supports Vulkan 1.4, a newer API version. Both support DirectX 12 (12_1) and OpenGL 4.6.

Process node differences matter for efficiency. The 7 nm process on the Radeon Pro VII allows 40.0M transistors per mm², while the 12 nm process on the CMP 30HX achieves 23.2M per mm². This process advantage, combined with the transistor count difference (13,230 million versus 6,600 million), explains why the Radeon Pro VII delivers 13.06 TFLOPS FP32 despite a higher TDP of 250 W versus 125 W. The CMP 30HX's lower power draw is partly due to fewer transistors and a simpler memory subsystem.

The CMP 30HX's PCIe 1.0 x4 interface is a major architectural limitation. This severely restricts data transfer between the GPU and host system, which is acceptable for mining workloads that keep data on the card but problematic for any general-purpose compute. The Radeon Pro VII's PCIe 4.0 x16 interface provides up to sixteen times the bandwidth (in lanes) and double the per-lane throughput of PCIe 1.0, enabling faster data exchange for compute tasks.

Where Each One Wins

The AMD Radeon Pro VII wins in every measured benchmark and in most practical categories. Its 13.06 TFLOPS FP32 and 26.11 TFLOPS FP16 make it suitable for double-precision-adjacent professional workloads, scientific computing, and content creation. The 16 GB HBM2 memory with 1.02 TB/s bandwidth handles large datasets and high-resolution textures without swapping. The six mini-DisplayPort 1.4a outputs support multi-monitor professional setups. Its 93rd percentile ranking places it among the top GPUs in the database, competing closely with the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 (4.7% behind) and the AMD Radeon RX 7900M (0.4% behind).

The NVIDIA CMP 30HX wins in power efficiency and physical footprint. Its 125 W TDP is exactly half of the Radeon Pro VII's 250 W, and its 300 W suggested PSU requirement is half of the 600 W needed for the AMD card. At 229 mm length, it is 76 mm shorter than the Radeon Pro VII, fitting into smaller chassis. Its 6 GB GDDR6 memory is sufficient for mining algorithms that do not require large memory pools. The 89th percentile ranking places it above most GPUs, but its average score of 63842 is 34% below the Radeon Pro VII's 97131.

For mining operations with strict power budgets, the CMP 30HX offers lower operating costs per card. However, the performance per watt is not necessarily better: the CMP 30HX delivers 5.027 TFLOPS at 125 W (40.2 GFLOPS/W), while the Radeon Pro VII delivers 13.06 TFLOPS at 250 W (52.2 GFLOPS/W). The AMD card is actually more compute-efficient per watt, despite its higher absolute draw. For any workload that involves display output, the CMP 30HX is disqualified entirely. For professional compute, rendering, or multi-monitor productivity, the Radeon Pro VII is the clear choice based on all recorded data.