AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT vs NVIDIA Tesla M4 Comparison

Where Each One Wins

The recorded data splits these two cards into sharply different use cases, and the verdict is not subtle. The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT dominates nearly every benchmark category in the database, while the NVIDIA Tesla M4 wins only a single recorded test, but that single win is decisive in its own narrow domain.

The Radeon RX 6650 XT is the clear choice for any graphics-centric workload. It posts a PassMark G3D score of 17166, a PassMark G2D score of 918, and a Geekbench Vulkan score of 81306. It also leads in DirectX generations across the board: PassMark DirectX 9 at 215, DirectX 10 at 109, DirectX 11 at 169, and DirectX 12 at 62. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1859 further confirms its strength in modern gaming and D3D12 rendering. The Geekbench Metal score of 97969 reinforces that the card handles compute and graphics APIs well.

The Tesla M4, by contrast, has no display outputs at all. It is a compute-oriented accelerator, not a rendering card. Its only recorded benchmark is Geekbench OpenCL, where it scores 16932, beating the Radeon's OpenCL score of 10111 by 40.3%. That is its entire win condition. If the workload is OpenCL compute and nothing else, the Tesla M4 is the better part. If the workload involves graphics, DirectX, Vulkan, Metal, or even general compute across multiple APIs, the Radeon wins.

The percentile data tells the same story. The Radeon sits at the 65th percentile among all GPUs, while the Tesla M4 sits at the 60th. That five-point gap in the broader distribution reflects the Radeon's wider applicability. The average benchmark score for the Radeon is 19765, versus 16932 for the Tesla. The Radeon's nearest rivals, such as the AMD FirePro W7000 at 19905 and the NVIDIA Tesla K40m at 19885, bracket its average score within about 0.7%, meaning it is competitive with those older workstation cards. The Tesla M4's nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT at 17083 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 at 17037, again within 0.9%, showing it is a mid-pack compute card from its era.

So the split is simple: the Radeon wins everywhere except raw OpenCL throughput, and even there the margin is large enough to matter only for specific compute pipelines.

Architecture Differences

The two cards come from different generations and different design philosophies. The Radeon RX 6650 XT uses the Navi 23 chip built on RDNA 2.0 architecture, fabricated on a 7 nm process at TSMC. It packs 11,060 million transistors into a 237 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 46.7 million per square millimeter. The Tesla M4 uses the GM206 chip on Maxwell 2.0 architecture, also from TSMC, but on a 28 nm process. It has 2,940 million transistors on a 228 mm² die, with a density of 12.9 million per square millimeter. The process advantage alone explains much of the performance gap: the Radeon packs nearly four times the transistors into almost the same die area.

The Radeon features 2048 shading units, 128 texture mapping units, 64 raster operations units, and 32 ray tracing cores. The Tesla M4 has 1024 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs, with no ray tracing cores. The Radeon's memory subsystem is also far stronger: 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus with 280.3 GB/s of bandwidth, versus 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus with 88.00 GB/s. Clock speeds amplify the gap further. The Radeon runs at a base of 2055 MHz, a game clock of 2410 MHz, and a boost of 2635 MHz. The Tesla M4 runs at 872 MHz base and 1072 MHz boost. That is more than a 2.4x difference in boost clock.

The Radeon supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the Tesla M4 supports only DirectX 12 (12_1). Both support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4, but the Radeon adds a Geekbench Metal score of 97969, indicating Apple's Metal API is part of its capability set. The Tesla M4 has no Metal benchmark recorded. The Radeon is a dual-slot card with a 1x 8-pin power connector and a 176 W TDP. The Tesla M4 is a single-slot card with no power connectors listed and a 50 W TDP. The Radeon uses a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface; the Tesla M4 uses PCIe 3.0 x16. The Radeon has display outputs (1x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4a); the Tesla M4 has no outputs.

These are not merely different tiers of the same kind of product. They are different classes: a consumer gaming and rendering GPU versus a low-power compute accelerator.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The only direct head-to-head benchmark recorded in the database is Geekbench OpenCL. In that test, the Tesla M4 scores 16932 and the Radeon RX 6650 XT scores 10111. The delta is 40.3% in favor of the Tesla M4. That is a substantial margin, and it is the sole reason the Tesla M4 wins one of the two cards' total wins.

But the broader benchmark suite, where each card is measured individually, shows how lopsided the overall comparison is. The Radeon's PassMark G3D score of 17166 versus the Tesla M4's lack of any DirectX or G3D score means the Radeon is the only one of the two with meaningful graphics performance. The Radeon's Geekbench Vulkan score of 81306 and Metal score of 97969 have no Tesla counterpart. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1859 has no Tesla counterpart. The PassMark DirectX 9, 10, 11, and 12 scores of 215, 109, 169, and 62 respectively have no Tesla counterpart.

In compute terms beyond OpenCL, the Radeon's PassMark GPU Compute score is 7532. The Tesla M4 has no such score recorded. The Radeon's FP32 throughput is 10.79 TFLOPS, and its FP16 throughput is 21.59 TFLOPS (2:1). The Tesla M4's FP32 is 2.195 TFLOPS, and it has no FP16 figure recorded. So even in raw compute, the Radeon is roughly 4.9x faster in FP32, though the Tesla's OpenCL score suggests architectural efficiency in that specific API.

The average benchmark scores reinforce the pattern: the Radeon averages 19765, the Tesla averages 16932. The Radeon's nearest rival, the AMD FirePro W7000, scores 19905, just 0.7% above the Radeon. The Tesla's nearest rival, the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT, scores 17083, only 0.9% above the Tesla. So both cards sit near their respective peer groups, but those peer groups are separated by a wide performance chasm.

The Verdict

The data points to a clear conclusion: the AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT is the superior card for virtually any workload that involves graphics, modern APIs, or general compute. It wins on every recorded test except Geekbench OpenCL, and it offers dramatically higher clocks, more memory, more bandwidth, more shading units, and ray tracing support. Its 65th percentile standing among all GPUs, versus the Tesla M4's 60th, confirms that it is the stronger part overall.

The NVIDIA Tesla M4 is a specialized compute accelerator. Its single win in Geekbench OpenCL, with a 40.3% margin over the Radeon, makes it the better choice only if the workload is exclusively OpenCL compute and power draw is a priority. The Tesla M4 draws 50 W versus the Radeon's 176 W, and it is a single-slot card with no power connector, so it fits in low-power, space-constrained servers. But that advantage comes with no display outputs, no ray tracing, 4 GB of memory, and a 28 nm process from 2015.

For anyone building a system that will render, game, or run modern graphics APIs, the Radeon RX 6650 XT is the only reasonable pick. For anyone running a dedicated OpenCL compute cluster where power and slot space are paramount, the Tesla M4 has a narrow but real niche. The database shows a 0-win versus 1-win split in head-to-head tests, but the weight of the full benchmark suite makes the Radeon the default choice.

FAQ

Q: Which card has better overall performance?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT. It has an average benchmark score of 19765 versus 16932 for the NVIDIA Tesla M4, and it sits at the 65th percentile among all GPUs versus the Tesla's 60th.

Q: Is there any test where the Tesla M4 beats the Radeon?

A: Yes. In Geekbench OpenCL, the Tesla M4 scores 16932 against the Radeon's 10111, a 40.3% margin in favor of the Tesla M4.

Q: Does the Tesla M4 support display output?

A: No. The Tesla M4 has no display outputs, while the Radeon RX 6650 XT has 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a.

Q: How do their memory specifications compare?

A: The Radeon has 8 GB of GDDR6 with 280.3 GB/s bandwidth on a 128-bit bus. The Tesla M4 has 4 GB of GDDR5 with 88.00 GB/s bandwidth on a 128-bit bus.

Q: Which card supports ray tracing?

A: Only the Radeon RX 6650 XT. It has 32 ray tracing cores, while the Tesla M4 has none.

Q: What are their power requirements?

A: The Radeon RX 6650 XT has a 176 W TDP and requires a 1x 8-pin power connector with a suggested 450 W PSU. The Tesla M4 has a 50 W TDP, no power connector listed, and a suggested 250 W PSU.

Specification Differences

| Field | AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT | NVIDIA Tesla M4 |

|---|---|---|

| Architecture | RDNA 2.0 | Maxwell 2.0 |

| Process Node | 7 nm | 28 nm |

| Transistors | 11,060 million | 2,940 million |

| Die Size | 237 mm² | 228 mm² |

| Transistor Density | 46.7M / mm² | 12.9M / mm² |

| Base Clock | 2055 MHz | 872 MHz |

| Boost Clock | 2635 MHz | 1072 MHz |

| Memory Size | 8 GB | 4 GB |

| Memory Type | GDDR6 | GDDR5 |

| Memory Clock | 2190 MHz, 17.5 Gbps effective | 1375 MHz, 5.5 Gbps effective |

| Memory Bandwidth | 280.3 GB/s | 88.00 GB/s |

| Shading Units | 2048 | 1024 |

| TMUs | 128 | 64 |

| ROPs | 64 | 32 |

| Ray Tracing Cores | 32 | None |

| Pixel Rate | 168.6 GPixel/s | 34.30 GPixel/s |

| Texture Rate | 337.3 GTexel/s | 68.61 GTexel/s |

| FP32 Performance | 10.79 TFLOPS | 2.195 TFLOPS |

| FP16 Performance | 21.59 TFLOPS (2:1) | None |

| TDP | 176 W | 50 W |

| Slot Width | Dual-slot | Single-slot |

| Power Connectors | 1x 8-pin | None |

| Suggested PSU | 450 W | 250 W |

| Bus Interface | PCIe 4.0 x8 | PCIe 3.0 x16 |

| Display Outputs | 1x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4a | No outputs |

| DirectX Support | 12 Ultimate (12_2) | 12 (12_1) |

| Release Date | 2022-05-09 | 2015-11-09 |

| Launch MSRP | 399 USD | None |