AMD Radeon RX 9070 vs NVIDIA Quadro M4000M Comparison

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 and the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M occupy entirely different corners of the GPU landscape, and the recorded data reflects that gap bluntly. The RX 9070 is a current desktop part built on AMD's RDNA 4.0 architecture, still in active production, with a 69th percentile standing against all GPUs in the database. The Quadro M4000M is an end-of-life Maxwell 2.0 mobile workstation module sitting at the 65th percentile. Four percentile points apart might sound modest, but the shared benchmark results tell a far more dramatic story, with the RX 9070 winning every direct comparison by margins that are not close. This page breaks down where each card's strengths actually lie, how the architectures differ, and what the specification sheet reveals about the roughly decade of design evolution between them.

Where Each One Wins

Strictly on the benchmark data, the RX 9070 wins everything the two share. There is no recorded test where the Quadro M4000M comes out ahead: the head-to-head record stands at two wins for the RX 9070 and zero for the M4000M.

That said, the M4000M is not competing in the same arena. It is an MXM module, a mobile form factor designed to be integrated into portable workstations rather than installed in a desktop chassis. Its 100 W TDP and absence of external power connectors make it a self-contained solution for machines where a 220 W desktop card drawing from two 8-pin connectors is simply not an option. If the use case is a mobile workstation chassis, the RX 9070 is not even a candidate.

For every workload where both are viable, the data favors the RX 9070 without qualification. Compute throughput, Vulkan rendering, memory bandwidth, feature support: every measurable axis tilts the same direction. The M4000M's only practical wins are physical and electrical: it fits where the RX 9070 cannot, and it sips power by comparison.

Architecture Differences

The generational divide here is stark. The RX 9070 uses AMD's Navi 48 chip on the RDNA 4.0 architecture, manufactured at TSMC on a 4 nm process. The Quadro M4000M uses NVIDIA's GM204 chip on Maxwell 2.0, built at TSMC on a 28 nm process. The transistor counts illustrate nearly a decade of scaling: 53,900 million transistors on the Navi 48 versus 5,200 million on the GM204, packed into a smaller die, 357 mm² against 398 mm². Transistor density works out to 151.0M per mm² for the RX 9070 versus 13.1M per mm² for the M4000M.

The feature gap is just as wide. The RX 9070 includes 56 ray tracing cores, a hardware capability the Maxwell-based Quadro lacks entirely; the M4000M has no RT cores and no tensor cores listed in the database. The API support differs too: the RX 9070 reports DirectX 12 Ultimate (feature level 12_2), while the M4000M reports DirectX 12 (feature level 12_1). Both list OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4, which is the one area of parity in the entire spec sheet.

Bus interface is another differentiator. The RX 9070 runs PCIe 5.0 x16, while the M4000M is limited to PCIe 3.0 x16. Production status completes the picture: the RX 9070 is active with no successor listed, whereas the M4000M is end-of-life, preceded by Quadro Kepler-M and succeeded by Quadro Pascal-M.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

Only two tests exist in the database for both cards, and both are blowouts.

Geekbench OpenCL: the RX 9070 scored 131,539 against the M4000M's 19,989, a margin of 558.1 percent. That is not a competitive gap, it is a categorical one. OpenCL results indicate general compute throughput, and the RX 9070's 36.13 TFLOPS of FP32 muscle, backed by 644.6 GB/s of memory bandwidth, simply overwhelms a chip rated at 2.593 TFLOPS with 160.4 GB/s of bandwidth. Any GPGPU workload, whether rendering, simulation, or data processing, will run at a fundamentally different pace on the newer card.

Geekbench Vulkan: the RX 9070 scored 58,705 versus 20,971 for the M4000M, a 179.9 percent advantage. Interesting detail here: the M4000M actually performs relatively better in Vulkan than in OpenCL, where the gap is more than three times larger. Even so, the older card's Vulkan result still loses by nearly a factor of three.

Context from each card's wider benchmark record reinforces the picture. The RX 9070's database results include a 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 6290 and a PassMark G3D score of 25,381, alongside a PassMark GPU compute score of 14,737. Its average benchmark score across the database is 23,877, and its nearest rivals include the GeForce GTX TITAN Z (average score 23,736, 0.6 percent behind), the Radeon RX 6800S (24,063, 0.8 percent ahead), the RTX 3080 Mobile (23,628, 1.1 percent behind), and the RTX 2080 SUPER (24,170, 1.2 percent ahead). In other words, the RX 9070 trades blows in a cluster of recognizable performance-tier cards.

The M4000M's average benchmark score is 20,480, with nearest rivals including the RTX 3070 Mobile (20,534, 0.3 percent ahead), the Arc B570 (20,556, 0.4 percent ahead), the Arc A750 (20,582, 0.5 percent ahead), and the R9 M390X (20,662, 0.9 percent ahead). Note that these average scores are computed across different test mixes, since the M4000M only has two recorded results, so the raw averages are closer than the shared head-to-head results suggest. The shared tests are the honest comparison, and they are lopsided.

Specification Differences

The specification deltas, field by field:

• Architecture and process: RDNA 4.0 on 4 nm versus Maxwell 2.0 on 28 nm, both TSMC.
• Clocks: the RX 9070 runs a 1330 MHz base, 2520 MHz boost, and a 2070 MHz game clock; the M4000M runs 975 MHz base and 1013 MHz boost, with memory at 1253 MHz (5 Gbps effective) versus 2518 MHz (20.1 Gbps effective) on the Radeon.
• Memory: 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256 bit bus with 644.6 GB/s bandwidth, versus 4 GB of GDDR5 on the same 256 bit bus with 160.4 GB/s. Bus width is the sole memory spec they share.
• Shader resources: 3584 shading units, 224 TMUs, and 128 ROPs on the RX 9070, against 1280 shading units, 80 TMUs, and 64 ROPs on the M4000M.
• Throughput: pixel rate of 322.6 GPixel/s versus 64.83 GPixel/s, texture rate of 564.5 GTexel/s versus 81.04 GTexel/s, and FP32 compute of 36.13 TFLOPS versus 2.593 TFLOPS. The RX 9070 also lists FP16 at a 1:1 ratio with FP32; no FP16 figure is recorded for the Quadro.
• Ray tracing: 56 RT cores versus none.
• Power and form factor: 220 W TDP, dual-slot, two 8-pin connectors, and a 550 W suggested PSU on the RX 9070; 100 W TDP, MXM module, no power connectors on the M4000M.
• Display outputs: the RX 9070 provides 1x HDMI 2.1b and 3x DisplayPort 2.1a; the M4000M's outputs are portable-device dependent.
• Release dates: 2025-03-05 for the RX 9070, 2015-08-17 for the M4000M.

Where they match: manufacturer of the silicon aside, both use TSMC fabrication, a 256 bit memory bus, PCIe x16 interfaces (different generations), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4.

FAQ

Q: Is the RX 9070 faster than the Quadro M4000M in compute?

A: Yes, decisively. Geekbench OpenCL results show 131,539 for the RX 9070 versus 19,989 for the M4000M, a 558.1 percent difference.

Q: How large is the gaming (Vulkan) gap?

A: Geekbench Vulkan results are 58,705 versus 20,971, a 179.9 percent advantage for the RX 9070.

Q: Can the Quadro M4000M do ray tracing in hardware?

A: No. The database lists no RT cores and no tensor cores for the GM204-based M4000M, while the RX 9070 carries 56 RT cores.

Q: Do both cards support the same DirectX level?

A: No. The RX 9070 reports DirectX 12 Ultimate (feature level 12_2); the M4000M reports DirectX 12 (feature level 12_1). OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4 are identical on both.

Q: What power supply does each need?

A: The RX 9070 is a 220 W card with two 8-pin connectors and a 550 W suggested PSU. The M4000M is a 100 W MXM module with no external power connectors and no listed PSU requirement.

Q: Are both cards still in production?

A: No. The RX 9070 is listed as active. The M4000M is end-of-life, sitting between its predecessor (Quadro Kepler-M) and successor (Quadro Pascal-M).

The Verdict

If the decision is about performance in any workload both cards can run, it is not a decision at all: the RX 9070 wins every shared benchmark, by 558.1 percent in OpenCL and 179.9 percent in Vulkan. It brings 16 GB of GDDR6 instead of 4 GB of GDDR5, roughly four times the memory bandwidth, hardware ray tracing, a modern DirectX 12 Ultimate feature level, and PCIe 5.0 connectivity. Its launch MSRP was 549 USD.

The only scenario that favors the Quadro M4000M is the one where the RX 9070 physically cannot participate: a mobile workstation with an MXM slot. The M4000M is a 100 W self-contained module, needs no power connectors, and delivers its performance within a portable chassis. Against its own nearest rivals (the RTX 3070 Mobile, Arc B570, Arc A750, and R9 M390X, all within a percent of its average score), it holds its own as a mobile-class part.

For a desktop builder choosing a GPU today, the data points one way. For someone maintaining or evaluating an older mobile workstation, the M4000M's numbers are what they are: modest by current standards, but recorded within a competitive mobile field. Desktop performance belongs to the RX 9070; the M4000M's relevance is purely a matter of the form factor it was built for.