AMD Radeon Pro WX 2100 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Comparison

The AMD Radeon Pro WX 2100 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 occupy very different corners of the GPU landscape, and the recorded data reflects that split. The WX 2100 is a low-power professional card built on a 14 nm process with a 35 W TDP, while the GTX 980 is a full dual-slot gaming flagship from the Maxwell 2.0 era carrying a 165 W TDP. In the two head-to-head benchmarks recorded in the database, the GTX 980 wins both decisively. Yet the aggregate numbers tell a more interesting story: the WX 2100 holds a 46th percentile ranking against all GPUs versus 43 for the GTX 980, and its average benchmark score of 9,653 edges out the GTX 980's 8,167. Both cards are now end-of-life, and both launched at very different price points: 149 USD launch MSRP for the WX 2100, 549 USD for the GTX 980.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

Only two tests overlap directly between these cards, and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 swept both.

The largest gap comes in Geekbench OpenCL. The GTX 980 posted 34,676 points against the WX 2100's 8,536, a delta of 75.4 percent in NVIDIA's favor. That is not a close contest; it is a rout in raw compute throughput, and it aligns neatly with the theoretical specification gap: the GTX 980 delivers 4.981 TFLOPS of FP32 compute while the WX 2100 manages 1,248.3 GFLOPS. OpenCL workloads reward exactly the kind of shading-unit and bandwidth headroom the GTX 980 has in surplus.

Geekbench Vulkan narrows the margin but does not flip it. Here the GTX 980 scored 22,543 against 10,770 for the WX 2100, a 52.2 percent advantage for NVIDIA. The Vulkan result is proportionally stronger for the WX 2100 relative to its OpenCL showing, suggesting the GCN 4.0 architecture holds up somewhat better in modern explicit-API workloads than in older compute frameworks, but the gap remains more than double in absolute terms.

Context matters when reading these numbers. The WX 2100's average benchmark score of 9,653 places it in the company of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M (average score 9,645, just 0.1 percent behind), the NVIDIA Quadro P4000 (9,665, 0.1 percent ahead), the NVIDIA Quadro K5000 (9,637, 0.2 percent behind), and the NVIDIA Tesla C2070 (9,716, 0.6 percent ahead). That is a tightly packed professional-and-mobile cluster. The GTX 980's average of 8,167 sits alongside the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M (8,135, 0.4 percent behind), the AMD Radeon R9 M360 (8,129, 0.5 percent behind), the NVIDIA GeForce 945M (8,099, 0.8 percent behind), and the NVIDIA GRID K2 (8,080, 1.1 percent behind). The reason the GTX 980's average trails despite crushing the direct head-to-head is breadth of data: its database record spans eleven benchmark results, including passmark DirectX tests (164 in DirectX 9, 83 in DirectX 11, 53 in DirectX 10, 46 in DirectX 12), a PassMark G3D score of 11,095, a PassMark GPU compute score of 4,753, a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 474, a Geekbench Metal score of 15,163, and a PassMark G2D score of 792. The WX 2100 has only its two Geekbench entries in the record, which makes its higher average a narrower, less representative sample rather than proof of superiority.

The Verdict

The data supports a clear division. For raw compute and graphics throughput, the GTX 980 is the only choice between the two: 75.4 percent faster in Geekbench OpenCL and 52.2 percent faster in Geekbench Vulkan, backed by 2048 shading units, 128 TMUs, 64 ROPs, 224.4 GB/s of memory bandwidth, and a 256-bit bus.

The WX 2100 argues for itself on physical and platform grounds. It is a single-slot card measuring 168 mm long and 69 mm tall, needs no power connectors, draws 35 W, and is paired with a suggested PSU of just 200 W. The GTX 980 is a dual-slot card, 267 mm long, 111 mm tall, and 40 mm wide, requiring 2x 6-pin power connectors and a suggested 450 W PSU. For compact workstations where slot count and power delivery are hard constraints, the WX 2100 fits where the GTX 980 simply cannot.

Both cards are end-of-life, so neither is a forward-looking purchase; the choice comes down to whether throughput or form factor governs the deployment.

Architecture Differences

These GPUs represent opposite design philosophies of their era. The WX 2100 uses the Lexa chip on AMD's GCN 4.0 architecture, fabricated at GlobalFoundries on a 14 nm process, packing 2,200 million transistors into a 103 mm² die for a density of 21.4M transistors per square millimeter. The GTX 980 uses the GM204 chip on NVIDIA's Maxwell 2.0 architecture, fabricated at TSMC on a 28 nm process, with 5,200 million transistors across a 398 mm² die at 13.1M per square millimeter. The WX 2100's process advantage gives it roughly 63 percent higher transistor density despite its far smaller die.

The resource disparity is stark. The WX 2100 fields 512 shading units, 32 TMUs, and 16 ROPs; the GTX 980 quadruples the shading units at 2048, quadruples the TMUs at 128, and quadruples the ROPs at 64. Pixel throughput reflects this: 19.50 GPixel/s and 39.01 GTexel/s for the WX 2100 versus 77.82 GPixel/s and 155.6 GTexel/s for the GTX 980.

Memory configurations also diverge sharply. The WX 2100 carries 2 GB of GDDR5 on a 64-bit bus at 6 Gbps effective, yielding 48.00 GB/s of bandwidth. The GTX 980 carries 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus at 7 Gbps effective, yielding 224.4 GB/s. Clocks are closer than everything else: the WX 2100 runs a 925 MHz base and 1219 MHz boost, while the GTX 980 runs 1127 MHz base and 1216 MHz boost, so their boost clocks are nearly identical at the top end.

One unique WX 2100 capability is FP16 compute at 1,248.3 GFLOPS, a 1:1 ratio with its FP32 rate; the GTX 980 has no recorded FP16 figure. The bus interfaces differ as well: PCIe 3.0 x8 for the WX 2100 versus PCIe 3.0 x16 for the GTX 980. Display connectivity favors the professional card in modern terms, with 1x DisplayPort 1.4a and 2x mini-DisplayPort 1.4a, while the GTX 980 offers 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0, and 3x DisplayPort 1.2. API support is broadly similar, with both covering DirectX 12 and OpenGL 4.6, though the GTX 980 supports DirectX 12_1 features versus 12_0 for the WX 2100, and Vulkan 1.4 versus 1.3. Release dates are nearly three years apart: the GTX 980 arrived in September 2014 as part of GeForce 900, and the WX 2100 followed in June 2017 within the Radeon Pro Polaris (WX x100) generation, succeeded by Radeon Pro Vega and preceded by Radeon Pro GCN.

FAQ

Q: Which card is faster in the direct head-to-head benchmarks?

A: The GTX 980 won both shared tests: Geekbench OpenCL at 34,676 versus 8,536 (75.4 percent ahead) and Geekbench Vulkan at 22,543 versus 10,770 (52.2 percent ahead).

Q: How can the WX 2100 have a higher average benchmark score if it lost every head-to-head test?

A: The WX 2100's average of 9,653 is computed from just two Geekbench results, while the GTX 980's 8,167 averages eleven results spanning multiple weaker PassMark DirectX entries. The averages are not directly comparable samples.

Q: Which card needs less power?

A: The WX 2100, with a 35 W TDP, no power connectors, and a suggested 200 W PSU. The GTX 980 has a 165 W TDP, requires 2x 6-pin connectors, and calls for a 450 W PSU.

Q: How do the memory subsystems compare?

A: The GTX 980 has 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus delivering 224.4 GB/s. The WX 2100 has 2 GB of GDDR5 on a 64-bit bus delivering 48.00 GB/s.

Q: Do these cards support ray tracing or AI acceleration hardware?

A: No. The database lists no RT cores and no tensor cores for either card.

Q: Which cards does the database list as their closest rivals?

A: The WX 2100 clusters with the GTX 960M, Quadro P4000, Quadro K5000, and Tesla C2070, all within 0.6 percent of its average score. The GTX 980 clusters with the GTX 950M, Radeon R9 M360, GeForce 945M, and GRID K2, all within 1.1 percent.

Where Each One Wins

The GTX 980 wins wherever throughput is the metric. OpenCL compute, Vulkan compute, pixel fill, texture fill, memory bandwidth, and shading resources all favor it by wide margins. Its 4.981 TFLOPS FP32 figure and 4 GB frame buffer make it the only viable option of the pair for graphics workloads of any substance, and its PassMark G3D score of 11,095 alongside direct DirectX test results across versions 9 through 12 confirm that standing.

The WX 2100 wins on deployment practicality and efficiency. Half the story is physical: single-slot, no auxiliary power, a 168 mm length, and a 35 W envelope mean it installs in small-form-factor and slot-constrained systems where a 267 mm dual-slot card drawing 165 W is a non-starter. It also carries professional positioning within the Radeon Pro line, DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, and 1:1 FP16 compute support the GTX 980 lacks. Its percentile ranking of 46 against all GPUs, ahead of the GTX 980's 43, and its tightly clustered rival set of workstation-class Quadro and Tesla parts underline that it competes in a different arena: compact professional reliability rather than raw speed. In this matchup, the GTX 980 takes the performance crown, and the WX 2100 takes the efficiency and footprint crown, with the recorded data leaving no ambiguity about either claim.