AMD Radeon Pro VII vs NVIDIA L40 Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The benchmark data in this comparison is decisively one-sided. Across the two shared tests, the NVIDIA L40 takes both wins with enormous margins. In Geekbench OpenCL, the L40 scores 330,926 against the Radeon Pro VII's 90,148, a 267.1% advantage. That is not a marginal lead; it is a generational gap expressed in raw compute throughput. The Vulkan result tells a similar story: the L40 posts 237,295 while the Radeon Pro VII manages 92,862, a 155.5% delta. In both cases, the L40 more than doubles the AMD card's output.

Context from the database's nearest rival data reinforces how dominant the L40 is. Its average benchmark score sits at 284,111, placing it in the 99th percentile of all GPUs tracked. The Radeon Pro VII's average is 97,131, which lands in the 93rd percentile. Both are high-end parts by historical standards, but the L40 is in a different performance tier entirely. The closest competitor to the L40 in the database is the NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Generation at 287,237 average, just 1.1% behind. The L40S sits 3.9% ahead of the L40, while the AMD Instinct MI300X is 10.7% ahead. The Radeon Pro VII, by contrast, trades blows with much older and smaller silicon: the AMD Radeon RX 7900M is 0.4% behind, the AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 is 5% behind, and the NVIDIA RTX A4500 is 6% behind. Only the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000, at 4.7% ahead, sits above it in that group.

What the head-to-head numbers show is not a close contest. The L40 wins both recorded tests, and the margins are so large that no single workload in the shared benchmark suite could plausibly flip the result. The Radeon Pro VII does have a Metal benchmark score of 108,383, but the L40 has no Metal result recorded, so no direct comparison is possible there. For OpenCL and Vulkan, the verdict is unambiguous.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA L40 has an average benchmark score of 284,111, placing it in the 99th percentile of all GPUs. The AMD Radeon Pro VII averages 97,131, which places it in the 93rd percentile.

Q: How large is the OpenCL performance gap?

A: The L40 scores 330,926 in Geekbench OpenCL versus 90,148 for the Radeon Pro VII. That is a 267.1% difference in favor of the NVIDIA card.

Q: Does the Radeon Pro VII win any shared benchmark?

A: No. Of the two head-to-head tests recorded, Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan, the Radeon Pro VII wins zero. The L40 wins both.

Q: What is the closest rival to each card in the database?

A: For the L40, the NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Generation is closest at 287,237 average, 1.1% behind. For the Radeon Pro VII, the AMD Radeon RX 7900M is closest at 97,487 average, just 0.4% behind.

Q: How does the Radeon Pro VII compare to the NVIDIA RTX A4500?

A: The Radeon Pro VII averages 97,131, which is 6% ahead of the RTX A4500's 91,671 average. It also sits 5% ahead of the AMD Radeon Instinct MI60's 92,466 average.

Q: Are both cards still in production?

A: No. Both the NVIDIA L40 and the AMD Radeon Pro VII are marked as end-of-life in the database.

Architecture Differences

The two cards come from fundamentally different design philosophies and eras. The NVIDIA L40 is built on the AD102 chip using the Ada Lovelace architecture, fabricated on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It packs 76,300 million transistors into a 609 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 125.3 million per square millimeter. The Radeon Pro VII uses the Vega 20 chip with the GCN 5.1 architecture, also made by TSMC but on a 7 nm process. It holds 13,230 million transistors on a 331 mm² die, for a density of 40.0 million per square millimeter. The L40 is not just newer; it is denser by a factor of roughly three, which explains much of its compute advantage.

Feature support diverges sharply. The L40 includes 142 ray tracing cores and 568 tensor cores, hardware that the Radeon Pro VII lacks entirely: its RT core and tensor core fields are null. The L40 also supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the Radeon Pro VII tops out at DirectX 12 (12_1). Vulkan support is newer on the NVIDIA side at version 1.4 versus 1.3 for AMD. OpenGL is identical at 4.6.

Memory architecture is another major split. The L40 uses 48 GB of GDDR6 on a 384-bit bus, delivering 864.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The Radeon Pro VII uses 16 GB of HBM2 on a 4096-bit bus, delivering 1.02 TB/s. The AMD card has a narrower capacity but a wider bus and higher raw bandwidth. The L40 compensates with far higher compute throughput and much faster effective memory speed: 18 Gbps effective versus 2 Gbps effective. The Radeon Pro VII's FP16 rate of 26.11 TFLOPS is double its FP32 rate of 13.06 TFLOPS, a 2:1 ratio typical of GCN. The L40 runs FP16 and FP32 at the same 90.52 TFLOPS, a 1:1 ratio.

Specification Differences

The specification sheets diverge on nearly every meaningful field. The L40 has 18,176 shading units, 568 TMUs, and 192 ROPs. The Radeon Pro VII has 3,840 shading units, 240 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. Pixel rate favors the L40 at 478.1 GPixel/s versus 108.8 GPixel/s. Texture rate favors it as well: 1,414.3 GTexel/s versus 408.0 GTexel/s. FP32 compute is 90.52 TFLOPS for the L40 and 13.06 TFLOPS for the Radeon Pro VII.

Clock behavior also differs. The L40 has a base clock of 735 MHz and a boost of 2490 MHz. The Radeon Pro VII runs a base of 1400 MHz and a boost of 1700 MHz. The AMD card starts higher but boosts far less, while the NVIDIA card has a much wider boost range. Memory clocks are similarly asymmetric: the L40's memory runs at 2250 MHz with 18 Gbps effective, while the Radeon Pro VII's memory runs at 1000 MHz with 2 Gbps effective.

Power and physical specs differ too. The L40 has a 300 W TDP and requires a 700 W suggested PSU with a single 16-pin connector. The Radeon Pro VII has a 250 W TDP, a 600 W suggested PSU, and uses one 6-pin plus one 8-pin connector. Both are dual-slot cards. The L40 measures 267 mm in length and 111 mm in height; the Radeon Pro VII is longer at 305 mm with the same 111 mm height. Display outputs differ: the L40 offers 4x DisplayPort 1.4a, while the Radeon Pro VII offers 6x mini-DisplayPort 1.4a.

Release timing is not close. The L40 launched on 2022-10-12, the Radeon Pro VII on 2020-05-12. The L40's predecessor is listed as Server Ampere and its successor as Server Hopper. The Radeon Pro VII's predecessor is Radeon Pro Polaris and its successor is Radeon Pro Navi. The Radeon Pro VII has a launch MSRP of 1,899 USD; the L40 has no launch MSRP recorded.

Where Each One Wins

The NVIDIA L40 wins every shared benchmark category and dominates on raw compute metrics. Its 90.52 TFLOPS FP32 rate is nearly seven times the Radeon Pro VII's 13.06 TFLOPS. Texture rate is more than three times higher, pixel rate is more than four times higher. The L40 also brings hardware ray tracing and tensor cores, which the Radeon Pro VII does not have at all. For any workload that scales with shading units, TMUs, or ROPs, the L40 is the clear choice. The 48 GB memory capacity is triple the Radeon Pro VII's 16 GB, which matters for large models or datasets that must fit in VRAM.

The Radeon Pro VII does have a few points in its favor. Its HBM2 memory delivers 1.02 TB/s of bandwidth, higher than the L40's 864.0 GB/s. For bandwidth-bound tasks that do not need the L40's compute density, that wider bus could matter. It also has a higher base clock (1400 MHz versus 735 MHz) and a lower TDP (250 W versus 300 W) with a lower suggested PSU (600 W versus 700 W). Its 6x mini-DisplayPort 1.4a outputs exceed the L40's 4x DisplayPort 1.4a, which may suit multi-display setups. Its FP16 rate of 26.11 TFLOPS, while far below the L40's 90.52 TFLOPS, is double its own FP32 rate, which could benefit certain mixed-precision workloads.

The percentile data frames the choice cleanly. The L40 sits in the 99th percentile of all GPUs; the Radeon Pro VII sits in the 93rd. The L40's nearest rivals are all modern, high-end accelerators. The Radeon Pro VII's nearest rivals are a mix of older workstation cards and a laptop GPU. That is not a criticism of the AMD card so much as a statement of its competitive position: it belongs to an earlier generation with an earlier feature set.

The Verdict

The data points to one clear conclusion for most buyers: the NVIDIA L40 is the stronger card by a wide margin. It wins both head-to-head benchmarks, with a 267.1% lead in OpenCL and a 155.5% lead in Vulkan. Its average benchmark score of 284,111 is nearly triple the Radeon Pro VII's 97,131. It offers more memory, more shading units, more texture units, more ROPs, hardware ray tracing, tensor cores, and a newer API feature set. It is also denser, newer, and built on a more advanced process node.

The Radeon Pro VII is not without merit, but its merits are narrow. It provides higher memory bandwidth at 1.02 TB/s, a lower TDP, more display outputs, and a smaller physical footprint in terms of power connector requirements. It also has a recorded Metal benchmark score, which the L40 lacks, so for macOS-oriented workflows it may be the only option in this pairing. Its launch MSRP was 1,899 USD, though pricing details are not otherwise part of this analysis.

For compute, rendering, AI-adjacent workloads, or any task that leans on FP32 throughput, ray tracing, or tensor operations, the L40 is the obvious pick. The benchmark results are not close, and the architectural advantages reinforce the measured gap. For a builder with a strict power budget, a need for maximum memory bandwidth, or a requirement for many mini-DisplayPort outputs, the Radeon Pro VII remains a viable, if older, alternative. The database's recorded measurements, however, leave no doubt about which card delivers more performance per benchmark point: the NVIDIA L40, and it is not a contest.