AMD Radeon R9 M290X vs NVIDIA Tesla K40m Comparison

The AMD Radeon R9 M290X and NVIDIA Tesla K40m occupy very different corners of the GPU landscape despite sharing a 28 nm manufacturing process. The R9 M290X is a mobile-focused part from AMD’s GCN 1.0 generation, built around the Neptune chip and designed to be slotted into notebooks via an MXM module. The Tesla K40m, by contrast, is a dual-slot compute accelerator from NVIDIA’s Kepler family, built on the GK110B die and intended for server racks where display outputs are unnecessary. The database records show the R9 M290X with an average benchmark score of 23,276 and the Tesla K40m with an average score of 19,885, putting the AMD part roughly 17% higher in aggregate performance across recorded tests. That gap, however, tells only part of the story, as the two cards were engineered for entirely different workloads and system constraints.

Where Each One Wins

The R9 M290X wins the only directly comparable benchmark in the database, the Geekbench OpenCL test, scoring 22,028 against the Tesla K40m’s 19,885. That is a 10.8% advantage for the AMD part, which also holds a higher percentile ranking among all GPUs: 68th percentile versus 65th for the Tesla. The R9 M290X also has a second recorded score, a Geekbench Metal result of 24,524, which pushes its average benchmark score to 23,276. The Tesla K40m has no Metal score in the database, so the AMD card’s overall average reflects a broader set of tests.

The Tesla K40m’s case rests on its compute-oriented hardware rather than its raw benchmark totals. It offers 2,880 shading units, 240 texture mapping units, and 48 ROPs, figures that dwarf the R9 M290X’s 1,280 shading units, 80 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. The NVIDIA card also delivers 5.046 TFLOPS of FP32 compute, more than double the R9 M290X’s 2.304 TFLOPS. In memory capacity and bandwidth, the Tesla K40m leads with 12 GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus, yielding 288.4 GB/s, versus the R9 M290X’s 4 GB on a 256-bit bus at 153.6 GB/s. For workloads that scale with raw shader throughput, memory bandwidth, or frame buffer size, the Tesla K40m is the stronger choice on paper, even if the recorded OpenCL score does not reflect that.

Where the R9 M290X wins in practice is in power efficiency and mobility. The AMD card has a 100 W TDP and requires no external power connectors, while the Tesla K40m draws 245 W and needs a 550 W suggested PSU. The R9 M290X also supports display outputs, with its outputs described as portable device dependent, whereas the Tesla K40m has no outputs at all. The AMD part is an end-of-life mobile GPU, while the Tesla K40m is an end-of-life server accelerator, so the two are unlikely to be chosen against each other in a real system build. The database comparison, however, shows that in the one test where both were measured, the mobile AMD part comes out ahead.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs diverge at the architectural level. The R9 M290X uses AMD’s Graphics Core Next 1.0 architecture, a design that reorganized shader work into compute units with a focus on general-purpose throughput. The chip is codenamed Neptune and belongs to the Gem System generation, part of the R9 M200 family. It is fabricated by TSMC on a 28 nm process with 2,800 million transistors on a 212 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 13.2 million per square millimeter.

The Tesla K40m uses NVIDIA’s Kepler architecture, specifically the GK110B chip. Kepler was designed with a heavy emphasis on compute workloads, featuring a large number of SMX units and a configuration that prioritized parallel throughput over per-clock efficiency. The GK110B die is substantially larger at 561 mm² and packs 7,080 million transistors, though its transistor density is slightly lower at 12.6 million per square millimeter due to the larger die area. Both parts are on the same 28 nm TSMC node, but the NVIDIA chip uses nearly 2.5 times as many transistors and takes up more than 2.6 times the silicon area.

Clock speeds differ as well. The R9 M290X runs at 850 MHz base and 900 MHz boost, while the Tesla K40m sits lower at 745 MHz base and 876 MHz boost. Memory clocks also vary: the AMD card runs its GDDR5 at 1200 MHz, which translates to 4.8 Gbps effective, while the NVIDIA card runs at 1502 MHz for 6 Gbps effective. The Tesla K40m’s wider 384-bit memory bus compensates for its lower core clock, delivering nearly double the bandwidth of the R9 M290X.

API support is similar but not identical. Both cards support DirectX 12 (11_1) and OpenGL 4.6, but the Vulkan versions differ: the R9 M290X supports Vulkan 1.2.170, while the Tesla K40m supports Vulkan 1.2.175. Neither card has ray tracing or tensor cores, as those features came later in both product lines. The R9 M290X’s pixel rate is 28.80 GPixel/s and texture rate is 72.00 GTexel/s, while the Tesla K40m achieves 52.56 GPixel/s and 210.2 GTexel/s, reflecting its larger ROP and TMU counts.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has a higher average benchmark score?

A: The AMD Radeon R9 M290X has an average benchmark score of 23,276, while the NVIDIA Tesla K40m has an average score of 19,885. The R9 M290X also ranks at the 68th percentile among all GPUs, compared to the Tesla K40m’s 65th percentile.

Q: How do the two cards compare in the Geekbench OpenCL test?

A: The R9 M290X scores 22,028, which is 10.8% higher than the Tesla K40m’s 19,885. This is the only benchmark where both cards were measured directly.

Q: What is the memory configuration of each GPU?

A: The R9 M290X has 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus with 153.6 GB/s of bandwidth. The Tesla K40m has 12 GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus with 288.4 GB/s of bandwidth.

Q: Which card has higher raw compute throughput?

A: The Tesla K40m offers 5.046 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, which is more than double the R9 M290X’s 2.304 TFLOPS. The NVIDIA card also has 2,880 shading units, 240 TMUs, and 48 ROPs, versus 1,280 shading units, 80 TMUs, and 32 ROPs on the AMD part.

Q: What are the power requirements for each GPU?

A: The R9 M290X has a 100 W TDP and no power connectors, while the Tesla K40m has a 245 W TDP and requires a 550 W suggested PSU. The Tesla K40m is a dual-slot card, while the R9 M290X is an MXM module.

Q: Does either card support display outputs?

A: The R9 M290X supports display outputs, described as portable device dependent. The Tesla K40m has no display outputs.

Specification Differences

The recorded specifications reveal a clear split between the two cards. The R9 M290X uses the Neptune chip with GCN 1.0 architecture, while the Tesla K40m uses the GK110B chip with Kepler architecture. The AMD card has a 28 nm process node with 2,800 million transistors on a 212 mm² die, while the NVIDIA card also uses 28 nm but packs 7,080 million transistors onto a 561 mm² die. Transistor density slightly favors AMD at 13.2 million per square millimeter versus 12.6 million for NVIDIA.

Clock speeds: the R9 M290X runs at 850 MHz base and 900 MHz boost, while the Tesla K40m runs at 745 MHz base and 876 MHz boost. Memory clocks also differ, with the AMD card at 1200 MHz (4.8 Gbps effective) and the NVIDIA card at 1502 MHz (6 Gbps effective). The R9 M290X has 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding 153.6 GB/s, while the Tesla K40m has 12 GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus, yielding 288.4 GB/s.

Compute resources favor the Tesla K40m heavily. It has 2,880 shading units, 240 TMUs, and 48 ROPs, while the R9 M290X has 1,280 shading units, 80 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. Pixel rate is 28.80 GPixel/s for AMD and 52.56 GPixel/s for NVIDIA, and texture rate is 72.00 GTexel/s versus 210.2 GTexel/s. FP32 throughput is 2.304 TFLOPS on the AMD card and 5.046 TFLOPS on the NVIDIA card.

The Tesla K40m’s TDP is 245 W, and it requires a 550 W suggested PSU, while the R9 M290X has a 100 W TDP and no power connectors. The form factors differ as well: the R9 M290X is an MXM module, while the Tesla K40m is a dual-slot card measuring 267 mm (10.5 inches) in length. Both use PCIe 3.0 x16 interfaces. The R9 M290X supports Vulkan 1.2.170, while the Tesla K40m supports Vulkan 1.2.175. DirectX support is the same at 12 (11_1), and OpenGL support is also the same at 4.6.

The release dates are close, with the R9 M290X arriving on January 8, 2014, and the Tesla K40m on November 21, 2013. Both are end-of-life products. The Tesla K40m has a launch MSRP of 7,699 USD, while the R9 M290X has no recorded launch MSRP. The AMD card’s predecessor is listed as Solar System and its successor as Polaris Mobile, while the Tesla K40m’s predecessor is Tesla Fermi and its successor is Tesla Maxwell.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database contains one head-to-head benchmark between these two GPUs: the Geekbench OpenCL test. The R9 M290X scores 22,028, and the Tesla K40m scores 19,885, giving the AMD card a 10.8% lead. This result is notable because the Tesla K40m has far higher raw specifications, including more than double the shading units and FP32 throughput. The OpenCL score suggests that the R9 M290X’s higher base and boost clocks, 850 MHz and 900 MHz versus 745 MHz and 876 MHz, along with its GCN architecture’s scheduling efficiency, contribute to a better result in this particular workload.

The R9 M290X also has a Geekbench Metal score of 24,524, which is not matched by the Tesla K40m in the database. This Metal result raises the AMD card’s average benchmark score to 23,276, while the Tesla K40m’s average remains at 19,885. The nearest rivals for the R9 M290X include the AMD Radeon RX 6600M with an average score of 23,273, the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 at 23,250, the NVIDIA P106-100 at 23,249, and the AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700 at 23,315. The Tesla K40m’s nearest rivals include the AMD FirePro W7000 at 19,905, the AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT at 19,765, the AMD FirePro D300 at 19,637, and the NVIDIA Quadro K5200 at 19,602.

Looking at closest competitors, the R9 M290X sits within 0.2% of the Radeon AI PRO R9700 and essentially ties the RX 6600M, which shows that its 23,276 average score is competitive with much newer mobile GPUs. The Tesla K40m trails the FirePro W7000 by just 0.1% and leads the Quadro K5200 by 1.4%, placing it in a tight cluster of professional workstation GPUs from the same era. The 10.8% OpenCL delta between the two cards is therefore consistent with the R9 M290X’s position near the top of its peer group and the Tesla K40m’s position in the middle of its peer group.

The wins count in the database reflects this: the R9 M290X has one win in the head-to-head comparison, and the Tesla K40m has zero. That single win is the OpenCL test, and it is decisive enough to give the AMD card a clear advantage in the recorded metrics. The Tesla K40m’s strengths in memory capacity, bandwidth, and raw compute throughput remain visible in the specification sheet, but they do not translate into a better benchmark result in the available data.