AMD Radeon PRO W7900 vs NVIDIA L4 Comparison

The data presents a striking contrast between two professional workstation GPUs: the NVIDIA L4 and the AMD Radeon PRO W7900. While both are active products built on a 5 nm TSMC process, their benchmark profiles and physical designs suggest they are engineered for fundamentally different workloads. The L4 is a 72 W, single-slot, 169 mm card with no display outputs, while the W7900 is a 295 W, triple-slot, 280 mm behemoth with three DisplayPort 2.1 outputs. The benchmark results confirm this divergence, showing that a raw comparison of average scores hides the more important story of API-specific strengths.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head results reveal a split decision that is as clear as it is dramatic. In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the NVIDIA L4 delivers a score of 140838, which is a massive 66.9% higher than the AMD Radeon PRO W7900’s 84379. This is not a marginal victory; it is a decisive win that positions the L4 as the dominant compute engine in this specific API. The L4’s average score across all benchmarks is 131072, placing it in the 95th percentile of all GPUs, and its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, scores 131938, a marginal 0.7% difference. This places the L4 in rarefied company, performing on par with a top-tier consumer card despite its modest 72 W power envelope.

However, the tables turn completely in the Geekbench Vulkan test. Here, the AMD Radeon PRO W7900 scores 137070, outpacing the NVIDIA L4’s 121306 by 11.5%. This win showcases the W7900’s raw graphics throughput, which is consistent with its higher pixel rate of 479.0 GPixel/s and texture rate of 958.1 GTexel/s, compared to the L4’s 163.2 GPixel/s and 489.6 GTexel/s. The W7900’s average benchmark score of 110725 puts it in the 94th percentile, with its nearest rival being the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II at 109617, a 1% difference. The data suggests a clear narrative: the L4 excels in OpenCL compute tasks, while the W7900 is the stronger choice for Vulkan graphics workloads. The question is why, and the answer lies in their architectural designs.

FAQ

Q: Which card has a higher average benchmark score, and by how much?

A: The NVIDIA L4 has a higher average benchmark score of 131072 compared to the AMD Radeon PRO W7900’s 110725. This represents a significant gap, with the L4’s score being roughly 18.4% higher than the W7900’s average.

Q: Is the AMD Radeon PRO W7900 better than the NVIDIA L4 in all benchmarks?

A: No. The AMD Radeon PRO W7900 wins the Geekbench Vulkan test by 11.5%, but it loses the Geekbench OpenCL test by a substantial 66.9% margin to the NVIDIA L4. Each card has one win and one loss in the head-to-head comparison.

Q: How does the NVIDIA L4 compare to its nearest rival in terms of performance?

A: The NVIDIA L4’s average benchmark score of 131072 is only 0.7% lower than its closest competitor, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, which scores 131938. It also sits 3.1% behind the NVIDIA RTX 4000 Ada Generation and the NVIDIA A10M, which both score 135218 and 135230, respectively.

Q: What is the performance context for the AMD Radeon PRO W7900?

A: The AMD Radeon PRO W7900’s average score of 110725 is 1% higher than the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II’s 109617, but it is 2.8% lower than the NVIDIA RTX A5500 Mobile’s 113944 and 3.2% lower than the NVIDIA Tesla V100 SXM2 16 GB’s 114395.

Q: Do the two cards have any similarities in their API support?

A: Yes, both the NVIDIA L4 and the AMD Radeon PRO W7900 support DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. This means they are both compatible with modern graphics APIs, though their performance in those APIs varies significantly.

Q: What is the difference in their physical size and power requirements?

A: The NVIDIA L4 is a compact, single-slot card that is 169 mm long, 56 mm high, and requires no power connectors, with a TDP of 72 W. The AMD Radeon PRO W7900 is much larger at 280 mm long, 110 mm high, and 51 mm wide, is a triple-slot card, and requires two 8-pin power connectors, with a TDP of 295 W.

Architecture Differences

The architectural chasm between these two cards is vast. The NVIDIA L4 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with the AD104 chip, while the AMD Radeon PRO W7900 uses the RDNA 3.0 architecture with the Navi 31 chip. This fundamental difference dictates their respective strengths. The L4’s AD104 chip contains 35,800 million transistors on a 294 mm² die, resulting in a transistor density of 121.8M / mm². In contrast, the W7900’s Navi 31 chip packs 57,700 million transistors onto a much larger 529 mm² die, yielding a lower density of 109.1M / mm².

The compute resources are organized differently. The NVIDIA L4 has 7424 shading units, 240 texture mapping units (TMUs), and 80 raster output units (ROPs). It also features 60 ray tracing cores and 240 tensor cores, the latter being crucial for AI and machine learning workloads. The AMD Radeon PRO W7900, on the other hand, has a different configuration with 6144 shading units, 384 TMUs, and 192 ROPs. It boasts 96 ray tracing cores but has no tensor cores listed in the data. This absence is critical; the L4’s tensor cores likely contribute to its OpenCL dominance, while the W7900’s higher TMU and ROP counts explain its superior Vulkan rasterization performance.

Memory architectures also diverge sharply. The L4 comes with 24 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, delivering 300.1 GB/s of bandwidth. The W7900 doubles the capacity to 48 GB of GDDR6 memory but on a wider 384-bit bus, resulting in a 864.0 GB/s bandwidth. This 48 GB frame buffer is a massive advantage for large datasets and high-resolution textures. The L4’s memory clock is listed as 1563 MHz (12.5 Gbps effective), while the W7900’s is 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective), further explaining the bandwidth disparity. In terms of compute, the L4’s FP32 performance is 30.29 TFLOPS, while the W7900’s is 61.32 TFLOPS. The L4 also has a base clock of 795 MHz and a boost clock of 2040 MHz, whereas the W7900 runs at a higher 1760 MHz base and 2495 MHz boost.

The Verdict

Based strictly on the benchmark data, the choice between these two cards depends entirely on the target workload. For compute-heavy tasks that leverage OpenCL, the NVIDIA L4 is the clear winner, delivering a 66.9% higher score than the W7900. Its position in the 95th percentile and its proximity to the RTX 3090 Ti’s performance underscore its compute capability. If the primary application relies on OpenCL for rendering, simulation, or data processing, the L4 is the superior option, despite its lower TDP and smaller size.

Conversely, for graphics-intensive applications that utilize the Vulkan API, the AMD Radeon PRO W7900 is the stronger performer, beating the L4 by 11.5%. Its higher pixel and texture rates, along with its massive 48 GB memory buffer, make it the better choice for tasks like real-time 3D rendering, high-resolution video processing, or any workload that stresses the graphics pipeline. The W7900’s 94th percentile ranking and its triple-slot design with three DisplayPort 2.1 outputs suggest it is designed for professional visualization environments where output is required. The L4, with no display outputs, is clearly a server-side accelerator. The verdict is not about which card is better overall, but which is better suited for the specific API and task at hand.

Specification Differences

The specification sheet shows two very different products. The NVIDIA L4 is a low-profile, power-efficient compute card, while the AMD Radeon PRO W7900 is a high-power, full-length workstation card. Key differences include the process node, which is 5 nm for both, but the L4 uses the AD104 chip with 35,800 million transistors, while the W7900 uses the Navi 31 chip with 57,700 million transistors. The L4’s die size is 294 mm², while the W7900’s is 529 mm². Their shading unit counts are 7424 for the L4 and 6144 for the W7900, but the W7900 has more TMUs (384 vs 240) and ROPs (192 vs 80). The L4 has 60 RT cores and 240 tensor cores, while the W7900 has 96 RT cores and no tensor cores.

The memory specifications are starkly different: the L4 has 24 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus with 300.1 GB/s bandwidth, while the W7900 has 48 GB of GDDR6 on a 384-bit bus with 864.0 GB/s bandwidth. The L4’s FP32 and FP16 performance are both 30.29 TFLOPS, while the W7900’s are both 61.32 TFLOPS. The TDP is a major differentiator: the L4 is rated at 72 W with no power connectors and a suggested PSU of 250 W, while the W7900 is rated at 295 W, requires two 8-pin connectors, and suggests a 600 W PSU. The physical dimensions also differ significantly, with the L4 being 169 mm long and 56 mm high, and the W7900 being 280 mm long, 110 mm high, and 51 mm wide. The L4 has no display outputs, while the W7900 features three DisplayPort 2.1 and one mini-DisplayPort 2.1. The L4 is a single-slot card, while the W7900 is a triple-slot card. Their release dates are also different, with the L4 coming out on March 20, 2023, and the W7900 on May 25, 2023.

Where Each One Wins

The NVIDIA L4 wins in the Geekbench OpenCL benchmark and, by extension, in scenarios that rely on that API for general-purpose GPU computing. Its 66.9% lead suggests it is the better accelerator for compute-heavy tasks such as AI inference, scientific simulations, or data center workloads that prioritize raw FP32 throughput. The presence of 240 tensor cores makes it particularly well-suited for machine learning applications, even though the benchmark data does not explicitly test this. Its low TDP of 72 W and compact single-slot design also make it a winner in terms of density and power efficiency, allowing more cards to be packed into a server chassis without exceeding power budgets.

The AMD Radeon PRO W7900 wins decisively in the Geekbench Vulkan benchmark, indicating its superiority in graphics-centric tasks. Its 11.5% lead over the L4 in Vulkan, combined with its higher pixel rate of 479.0 GPixel/s and texture rate of 958.1 GTexel/s, makes it the winner for real-time 3D rendering, CAD visualization, or any application that demands high fill rates. The 48 GB memory buffer is a clear advantage for professionals working with massive textures, complex scenes, or large datasets that exceed the L4’s 24 GB capacity. With its three DisplayPort outputs, the W7900 is the winner for any workstation setup that requires direct display connectivity, whereas the L4 is a headless compute card. In short, the L4 wins where compute density and efficiency matter, and the W7900 wins where graphics throughput and memory capacity are paramount.