AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT vs NVIDIA Tesla P4 Comparison

Where Each One Wins

The recorded data shows a clear split between these two products, though it is heavily weighted in one direction. The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT wins both head-to-head benchmark comparisons in the database, claiming 2 wins while the NVIDIA Tesla P4 has 0 wins. This is not a subtle margin; the AMD card dominates in the two shared test workloads.

For the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, its strengths lie in raw compute throughput and modern API performance. In the Geekbench OpenCL test, it scores 187,673 against the Tesla P4’s 34,947, a delta of 437%. In the Geekbench Vulkan test, the AMD card scores 148,525 against 40,309, a delta of 268.5%. These are not marginal victories; they represent a generational leap in compute capability. The RX 6900 XT also has a much broader benchmark footprint, with 11 recorded test scores spanning DirectX 9 through DirectX 12, Metal, OpenCL, Vulkan, and general 3D performance.

The NVIDIA Tesla P4, by contrast, has a narrower data set. It only has two recorded benchmarks: Geekbench OpenCL and Vulkan. It wins no head-to-head tests. However, its percentile placement tells a different story. The Tesla P4 sits at the 81st percentile among all GPUs, which is respectable for a card designed in 2016. Its average benchmark score is 37,628, placing it near the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 (37,648, delta -0.1%) and the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (37,507, delta 0.3%). So while it loses to the AMD RX 6900 XT in direct comparisons, it still holds its own against much newer consumer cards in aggregate scoring.

The use-case split is therefore straightforward. The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is for demanding compute workloads, high-resolution gaming, and applications that leverage modern graphics APIs. The NVIDIA Tesla P4 is a low-power, single-slot accelerator with no display outputs, designed for datacenter inference and server-side tasks where power efficiency and physical footprint matter more than raw speed.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gap between these two GPUs is vast, reflecting nearly four years of silicon evolution. The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT uses the Navi 21 chip built on RDNA 2.0 architecture, manufactured on TSMC’s 7 nm process. It packs 26,800 million transistors on a 520 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 51.5 million per square millimeter. The NVIDIA Tesla P4 uses the GP104 chip on the older Pascal architecture, built on TSMC’s 16 nm process. It contains 7,200 million transistors on a 314 mm² die, with a density of 22.9 million per square millimeter.

The RDNA 2.0 architecture brings hardware ray tracing support, with 80 dedicated ray tracing cores. The Pascal architecture in the Tesla P4 has no ray tracing cores and no tensor cores either. The AMD card also features 5,120 shading units, 320 texture mapping units, and 128 render output units. The Tesla P4 has 2,560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. That is exactly half the shader count and half the texture and pixel throughput hardware.

Clock speeds differ dramatically. The RX 6900 XT has a base clock of 1825 MHz and a boost clock of 2250 MHz, with a game clock of 2015 MHz. The Tesla P4 runs at a base of 886 MHz and a boost of 1114 MHz. This is a 2x advantage in raw clock speed for the AMD part, before accounting for architectural efficiency gains.

Memory architecture also diverges. The RX 6900 XT uses 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, with a bandwidth of 512.0 GB/s. The Tesla P4 has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, with a bandwidth of 192.3 GB/s. The AMD card has more than double the memory capacity and nearly 2.7 times the bandwidth.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database contains two direct comparisons between these cards, both in Geekbench workloads. These are the only shared tests, so the analysis must rely on them.

In Geekbench OpenCL, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT scores 187,673. The NVIDIA Tesla P4 scores 34,947. The AMD card wins by 437%. This is a massive margin, driven by the combination of higher clock speeds, more shader units, and newer architecture. OpenCL performance is often a proxy for general compute capability, and here the RX 6900 XT demonstrates roughly 5.4 times the raw throughput of the Tesla P4 in this specific workload.

In Geekbench Vulkan, the AMD card scores 148,525 against the Tesla P4’s 40,309. The delta is 268.5%. Vulkan is a modern low-level API, and the RDNA 2.0 architecture is designed to excel in such environments. The Pascal architecture, while supporting Vulkan 1.4, is from an era before hardware ray tracing and other modern features.

The Tesla P4’s performance in these tests is not catastrophic in absolute terms. Its Vulkan score of 40,309 is higher than its OpenCL score of 34,947, suggesting the card handles the lower-level API slightly better. However, the gap to the RX 6900 XT is enormous. The average benchmark score for the AMD card is 50,951, while the Tesla P4 averages 37,628. That is a 35.4% aggregate difference, though the head-to-head deltas are far larger because they isolate specific workloads.

It is importantly the RX 6900 XT’s nearest rivals in the database are the NVIDIA CMP 50HX (average 51,790, delta -1.6%), the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 (50,001, delta 1.9%), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (49,957, delta 2%), and the Intel Arc A550M (49,737, delta 2.4%). This places the RX 6900 XT in a competitive band with high-end consumer GPUs. The Tesla P4’s nearest rivals are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 (37,648, delta -0.1%), the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (37,507, delta 0.3%), the AMD Radeon PRO W6400 (37,157, delta 1.3%), and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile (38,135, delta -1.3%). The Tesla P4 sits in the mid-range performance tier, roughly 26% below the RX 6900 XT in average score.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ on nearly every measurable specification. The most striking differences are in process node, transistor count, memory, and power.

| Specification | AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT | NVIDIA Tesla P4 |

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

| Process node | 7 nm | 16 nm |

| Transistors | 26,800 million | 7,200 million |

| Die size | 520 mm² | 314 mm² |

| Base clock | 1825 MHz | 886 MHz |

| Boost clock | 2250 MHz | 1114 MHz |

| Memory size | 16 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR5 |

| Memory bandwidth | 512.0 GB/s | 192.3 GB/s |

| Shading units | 5120 | 2560 |

| TMUs | 320 | 160 |

| ROPs | 128 | 64 |

| RT cores | 80 | None |

| FP32 performance | 23.04 TFLOPS | 5.704 TFLOPS |

| FP16 performance | 46.08 TFLOPS (2:1) | 89.12 GFLOPS (1:64) |

| TDP | 300 W | 75 W |

| Slot width | Triple-slot | Single-slot |

| Power connectors | 2x 8-pin | None |

| Suggested PSU | 700 W | 250 W |

| Bus interface | PCIe 4.0 x16 | PCIe 3.0 x16 |

| Display outputs | HDMI 2.1, 2x DP 1.4a, USB-C | No outputs |

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

The FP16 difference is notable. The RX 6900 XT delivers 46.08 TFLOPS with a 2:1 ratio, meaning it can do half-precision at twice the FP32 rate. The Tesla P4 delivers only 89.12 GFLOPS with a 1:64 ratio, meaning half-precision is heavily de-emphasized. This makes the AMD card far more suitable for workloads that benefit from FP16 compute.

Physical dimensions also differ. The RX 6900 XT is 267 mm long, 120 mm tall, and 50 mm wide. The Tesla P4 is 168 mm long, with no recorded height or width. The RX 6900 XT is a triple-slot card, while the Tesla P4 is single-slot and draws power entirely from the PCIe slot, requiring no external connectors.

FAQ

Q: Which card has higher raw compute performance in FP32?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT delivers 23.04 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, while the NVIDIA Tesla P4 delivers 5.704 TFLOPS. The AMD card is roughly 4 times faster in this metric.

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

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT scores 187,673, while the NVIDIA Tesla P4 scores 34,947. The AMD card wins by a delta of 437%.

Q: Does the NVIDIA Tesla P4 support ray tracing?

A: No. The Tesla P4 is based on the Pascal architecture and has no ray tracing cores. The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT has 80 dedicated ray tracing cores.

Q: What is the power consumption difference?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT has a TDP of 300 W and requires a 700 W suggested power supply. The NVIDIA Tesla P4 has a TDP of 75 W and requires a 250 W suggested power supply.

Q: Which card has more memory bandwidth?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT has 512.0 GB/s of bandwidth from 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. The NVIDIA Tesla P4 has 192.3 GB/s from 8 GB of GDDR5 memory.

Q: Can the NVIDIA Tesla P4 be used for display output?

A: No. The Tesla P4 has no display outputs. The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT includes 1x HDMI 2.1, 2x DisplayPort 1.4a, and 1x USB Type-C output.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous. The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is the superior performer in every recorded benchmark. It wins both head-to-head tests by massive margins (437% in OpenCL, 268.5% in Vulkan). It has more than double the shading units, 4 times the FP32 throughput, over 2.6 times the memory bandwidth, and 4 times the TDP budget to feed its higher clocks and larger die.

The NVIDIA Tesla P4, however, serves a different purpose entirely. It is a single-slot, 75 W accelerator with no display outputs, designed for server environments where power density and physical footprint are critical. Its 81st percentile ranking among all GPUs shows it remains functional for its intended datacenter workloads, and its average score of 37,628 places it alongside modern mid-range cards like the GeForce RTX 4070 (37,648).

For a user building a gaming rig, a workstation for creative content, or any system requiring modern graphics APIs with ray tracing, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is the clear choice. It launched with an MSRP of 999 USD and has since become end-of-life, but its 86th percentile ranking and average score of 50,951 keep it competitive with newer products.

For a user deploying inference or compute tasks in a rackmount server, the Tesla P4’s low power draw, single-slot design, and lack of display outputs make it a viable option, provided the workload tolerates its older Pascal architecture and limited 5.704 TFLOPS FP32 throughput. The choice is not about which card is faster, it is about which card fits the environment. The RX 6900 XT wins on performance; the Tesla P4 wins on efficiency and form factor. The benchmark data simply reflects that reality.