AMD Radeon Pro W5700X vs NVIDIA Tesla T4 Comparison

The NVIDIA Tesla T4 and AMD Radeon Pro W5700X are professional accelerators built for very different jobs, and the recorded benchmark data makes that split unusually clear. Both are end-of-life parts, both carry 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, and both sit in the high performance range of the database, with the T4 at the 90th percentile versus all GPUs and the W5700X at the 87th. Yet in the two head-to-head tests the database holds for this pairing, the Tesla T4 won both, by margins large enough that the comparison is less a contest than a demonstration of divergent design intent.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

Only two tests overlap between these cards in the database, and the Tesla T4 swept them.

In Geekbench OpenCL, the Tesla T4 scored 61276 against the W5700X's 43810, a 39.9 percent advantage for the NVIDIA card. Geekbench Vulkan widens that gap dramatically: the T4 posted 72190 while the W5700X managed 45246, a 59.6 percent win for the T4. Vulkan is the more telling of the two, because it exercises each vendor's graphics driver stack under a modern cross-platform API, and the T4's lead there is the largest recorded delta in this pairing.

There is a wrinkle worth noting before drawing conclusions. The W5700X also carries a Geekbench Metal score of 75427, the highest single score either card has recorded in any test. Metal runs on Apple platforms, which matters because the W5700X uses an Apple MPX bus interface rather than standard PCIe. In other words, the W5700X shows its best form on the platform it was built for, while the cross-platform compute tests that both cards share favor the T4 decisively.

Context from each card's neighborhood reinforces the picture. The T4's average benchmark score of 66733 places it 1.1 percent ahead of the AMD Radeon VII, 2.5 percent ahead of the NVIDIA Tesla P40, 2.7 percent behind the AMD Radeon Instinct MI25, and 3 percent behind the Intel Arc A770. The W5700X's average of 54828 sits 1.1 percent ahead of both the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 and the RTX 4080 SUPER, 1.6 percent behind the AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB, and 1.7 percent behind the AMD Radeon 8060S. So while the averages differ by roughly 21.7 percent in the T4's favor, both cards cluster tightly with their own neighbor sets.

Architecture Differences

The two cards share a TSMC heritage but little else at the silicon level.

The Tesla T4 is built on the TU104 chip, NVIDIA's Turing architecture, and a 12 nm process. It packs 13,600 million transistors into a 545 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 25.0M per mm². The W5700X uses the Navi 10 chip on RDNA 1.0, manufactured on a 7 nm process: 10,300 million transistors on a 251 mm² die, for a density of 41.0M per mm². The W5700X's die is less than half the area of the T4's while achieving substantially higher density, a natural consequence of the newer node.

The execution resources are, on paper, identical in count: 2560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 64 ROPs for both. What separates them is throughput and specialized hardware. The W5700X clocks far higher, with a 1243 MHz base and 2040 MHz boost against the T4's 585 MHz base and 1590 MHz boost, and it drives faster memory at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective) versus the T4's 1250 MHz (10 Gbps effective). The result: the W5700X delivers 448.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth to the T4's 320.0 GB/s, 130.6 GPixel/s of pixel throughput versus 101.8, and 326.4 GTexel/s of texture throughput versus 254.4. Raw FP32 compute also favors AMD, 10.44 TFLOPS against 8.141, with FP16 doubling on both sides, 20.89 versus 16.28 TFLOPS at a 2:1 rate.

The T4's answer is dedicated accelerators. It carries 40 RT cores for ray tracing and 320 tensor cores for machine learning and matrix work, features the RDNA 1.0 based W5700X simply does not have; its rtCores and tensorCores fields are empty in the database. This is the architectural crux of the comparison: the W5700X wins on clock speed, bandwidth, and rasterization rates, while the T4 brings fixed-function hardware for inference and ray tracing workloads.

Power and form factor diverge just as sharply. The T4 is a 70 W, single-slot card with no power connectors, 168 mm long, needing only a 250 W suggested PSU, and it communicates over PCIe 3.0 x16. The W5700X is a 205 W, quad-slot card, 305 mm long, with a 550 W suggested PSU, and it attaches via Apple MPX. The T4 also has no display outputs, confirming its identity as a compute card, while the W5700X offers one HDMI 2.0b port and four Thunderbolt outputs, confirming its identity as a workstation graphics card for machines with displays attached.

Software support rounds out the picture. The T4 reports DirectX 12 Ultimate (feature level 12_2), while the W5700X reports DirectX 12 (12_1); both support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4. Lineage also differs: the T4's predecessor is listed as Tesla Volta and its successor as Server Ampere, while the W5700X has no recorded predecessor or successor. The T4 launched on September 13, 2018 in database dating, the W5700X on December 11, 2019, both now end-of-life. The W5700X's launch MSRP was 999 USD.

Where Each One Wins

The Tesla T4 wins compute. Both shared benchmarks are compute API tests, OpenCL and Vulkan, and the T4 took them by 39.9 and 59.6 percent respectively. Add its 320 tensor cores, and the data describes a card purpose-built for inference serving and datacenter deployment: low 70 W draw, single-slot footprint, no power connectors, passive of display outputs, and a predecessor-successor chain that runs through Tesla Volta into Server Ampere. For dense multi-GPU server deployments, the T4's power and space profile is the differentiator.

The Radeon Pro W5700X wins as a workstation graphics card. Its higher pixel and texture rates, 40 percent more memory bandwidth, and higher boost clock suit visualization, content creation, and display-heavy workflows. Its four Thunderbolt outputs and single HDMI port, its Apple MPX interface, and its standout 75427 Geekbench Metal score all point to the Mac Pro as its native habitat, where Metal is the primary API. If the workload is rendering to screens rather than serving models, the W5700X's spec sheet is the stronger match despite losing the shared cross-platform tests.

The Verdict

The benchmark record is unambiguous where the two cards overlap: the Tesla T4 wins every shared test, by 39.9 percent in OpenCL and 59.6 percent in Vulkan, and holds a higher percentile ranking (90 versus 87) and higher average score (66733 versus 54828). For inference, compute, and dense server deployment, the T4 is the data-backed choice, and its tensor cores and 70 W envelope are unmatched here.

The W5700X is not a lesser card so much as a differently shaped one. It forfeits the cross-platform compute tests but brings faster clocks, more bandwidth, more rasterization throughput, more FP32 compute, and real display connectivity over an Apple-specific interface, with a best-in-comparison Metal result of 75427. Choose the T4 when the job is headless compute and machine learning. Choose the W5700X when the job is professional graphics inside an MPX-equipped workstation.

FAQ

Q: Which card is faster in the shared benchmarks? A: The Tesla T4 won both head-to-head tests, taking Geekbench OpenCL 61276 to 43810 (39.9 percent) and Geekbench Vulkan 72190 to 45246 (59.6 percent).

Q: Do they have the same amount of memory? A: Yes, both offer 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, though the W5700X provides 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth versus the T4's 320.0 GB/s.

Q: Which card has tensor cores? A: The Tesla T4, with 320 tensor cores plus 40 RT cores. The W5700X, based on RDNA 1.0, has neither in the database record.

Q: Which card is more power efficient in absolute terms? A: The Tesla T4, with a 70 W TDP, single-slot width, and no power connectors, versus the W5700X's 205 W TDP and quad-slot width.

Q: Can the W5700X drive displays? A: Yes, it offers one HDMI 2.0b output and four Thunderbolt outputs over its Apple MPX interface, while the T4 has no display outputs at all.

Q: What was the W5700X's launch MSRP? A: 999 USD at launch.