AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 vs NVIDIA Tesla P40 Comparison

Where Each One Wins

The benchmark data splits cleanly between these two accelerators, with each claiming one victory in the shared test suite. The NVIDIA Tesla P40 takes the Geekbench Vulkan test with a score of 68172 against the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64's 67032, a margin of 1.7 percent. This suggests the Pascal architecture holds a slight edge in low-level graphics API workloads, likely benefiting from driver maturity and the GP102 chip's design priorities.

The AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 counters in Geekbench OpenCL, scoring 62552 versus the Tesla P40's 62017, a narrow 0.9 percent advantage. The OpenCL result is particularly telling given the Vega 64's architecture is designed around compute throughput, with its GCN 5.0 layout and higher shading unit count. The delta is small, but it demonstrates that the Vega 10 chip can extract slightly more performance from heterogeneous compute workloads.

Looking beyond the direct comparisons, the database shows these two cards occupy different performance tiers overall. The Tesla P40 sits at the 89th percentile among all GPUs in the database, while the Vega 64 lands at the 86th percentile. The average benchmark score tells a more dramatic story: the Tesla P40 averages 65095 across its tested workloads, while the Vega 64 averages 50001. This gap of roughly 30 percent in average score is far larger than the individual head-to-head deltas would suggest, implying the Vega 64's performance is more variable across different test types, or that the database includes a broader set of workloads for the AMD card that drag down its average.

The nearest rival data reinforces this split. The Tesla P40's closest competitors in average score include the AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 at 64212 (1.4 percent behind), the AMD Radeon VII at 66004 (1.4 percent ahead), and the NVIDIA CMP 30HX at 63842 (2 percent behind). The Vega 64's rivals cluster around the 50000 mark: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti at 49957 (0.1 percent behind), the Intel Arc A550M at 49737 (0.5 percent behind), and the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT at 50951 (1.9 percent ahead). This places the two cards in entirely different performance neighborhoods despite their similar direct benchmark results.

FAQ

Q: Which card has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA Tesla P40, with an average score of 65095 compared to the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64's 50001. The Tesla P40 also ranks higher in the database at the 89th percentile versus the Vega 64's 86th percentile.

Q: How do the two cards compare in Vulkan performance?

A: The NVIDIA Tesla P40 wins the Geekbench Vulkan test, scoring 68172 against the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64's 67032, a 1.7 percent advantage for the NVIDIA card.

Q: Which card performs better in OpenCL workloads?

A: The AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 edges out the Tesla P40 in Geekbench OpenCL, scoring 62552 versus 62017, a 0.9 percent margin in favor of the AMD card.

Q: What are the closest rivals to each card in the database?

A: For the Tesla P40, the nearest rivals are the AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 (64212, 1.4 percent behind), the AMD Radeon VII (66004, 1.4 percent ahead), and the NVIDIA CMP 30HX (63842, 2 percent behind). For the Vega 64, they are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (49957, 0.1 percent behind), the Intel Arc A550M (49737, 0.5 percent behind), and the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (50951, 1.9 percent ahead).

Q: Do both cards support the same DirectX version?

A: Yes, both support DirectX 12 (12_1) and OpenGL 4.6. They differ in Vulkan support, with the Tesla P40 at Vulkan 1.4 and the Vega 64 at Vulkan 1.3.

Q: What is the production status of these cards?

A: Both are end-of-life products. The Tesla P40 was released in September 2016 and the Vega 64 in August 2017.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The direct comparisons between these two cards produce a near-split decision, with margins that are remarkably tight given the architectural differences. The Geekbench OpenCL test shows the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 scoring 62552 against the NVIDIA Tesla P40's 62017. The 0.9 percent delta is well within the range of run-to-run variance, but it does point to the Vega 64's compute-oriented design conferring a slight advantage in this workload. The Vega 10 chip packs 4096 shading units and 256 texture mapping units, both higher than the GP102's 3840 shading units and 240 TMUs, and that extra hardware appears to translate into measurable OpenCL throughput.

The Geekbench Vulkan test flips the result. The Tesla P40 scores 68172, beating the Vega 64's 67032 by 1.7 percent. This is a more decisive margin than the OpenCL result, and it suggests the Pascal architecture's higher pixel rate of 147.0 GPixel/s (against the Vega 64's 98.94 GPixel/s) may play a role in graphics-oriented workloads. The Tesla P40 also has 96 ROPs compared to the Vega 64's 64 ROPs, which likely contributes to its advantage in rasterization-heavy Vulkan tasks.

The discrepancy between these close head-to-head results and the large gap in average benchmark scores (65095 versus 50001) raises an interesting question. The Vega 64 has additional benchmark entries in the database, including a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1669 and a Geekbench Metal score of 68750. The Metal result is notably strong, but the 3DMark score appears to pull the average down substantially. The Tesla P40's average is derived from only its two benchmark entries, which are both high and tightly clustered. This means the average score comparison may not reflect a like-for-like test suite, even though it remains the database's best single metric for overall positioning.

The nearest rival data for each card reinforces the divide. The Tesla P40's rivals all sit within 2 percent of its average score, indicating a dense cluster of high-performance cards around the 64000 to 66000 range. The Vega 64's rivals cluster around 50000, a full 30 percent lower. Even the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, which sits 1.9 percent ahead of the Vega 64 in average score, only reaches 50951. The Tesla P40's position in the database's upper tier is unambiguous, while the Vega 64 occupies a more mid-range slot despite its competitive head-to-head results.

Specification Differences

The memory subsystems of these two cards could hardly be more different. The Tesla P40 carries 24 GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus, delivering 347.1 GB/s of bandwidth. The Vega 64 uses 8 GB of HBM2 on a 2048-bit bus, achieving 483.8 GB/s. The Vega 64's bandwidth advantage is substantial, roughly 39 percent higher, but the Tesla P40's capacity advantage is enormous, three times the memory. For workloads that need large datasets resident on the GPU, the Tesla P40 is clearly the better fit; for bandwidth-hungry tasks that fit within 8 GB, the Vega 64 has the edge.

Clock speeds differ modestly. The Tesla P40 has a base clock of 1303 MHz and a boost clock of 1531 MHz. The Vega 64 runs at 1247 MHz base and 1546 MHz boost. The memory clocks are not directly comparable due to different memory types: the Tesla P40's GDDR5 runs at 1808 MHz (7.2 Gbps effective), while the Vega 64's HBM2 runs at 945 MHz (1890 Mbps effective).

Compute throughput metrics show the Vega 64 ahead in raw numbers. It delivers 12.66 TFLOPS of FP32 versus the Tesla P40's 11.76 TFLOPS, a 7.6 percent advantage. The gap in FP16 is far larger: the Vega 64 produces 25.33 TFLOPS at a 2:1 ratio, while the Tesla P40 manages only 183.7 GFLOPS at a 1:64 ratio. This makes the Vega 64 dramatically better suited for workloads that leverage half-precision arithmetic. The texture rate also favors the Vega 64 at 395.8 GTexel/s against 367.4 GTexel/s, but the pixel rate favors the Tesla P40 at 147.0 GPixel/s versus 98.94 GPixel/s.

Power and physical specifications differ as well. The Tesla P40 has a TDP of 250 W and uses a single 8-pin EPS power connector. The Vega 64 draws 295 W and requires two 8-pin connectors. Both suggest a 600 W power supply. The Tesla P40 is shorter at 267 mm (10.5 inches) versus the Vega 64's 280 mm (11 inches), and both are dual-slot designs with the same 111 mm height. The Tesla P40 has no display outputs, while the Vega 64 provides 1x HDMI 2.0b and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a, a critical difference for anyone needing video output.

Architecture Differences

The underlying silicon tells a story of two very different design philosophies. The Tesla P40 uses NVIDIA's GP102 chip built on a 16 nm TSMC process, part of the Pascal architecture. The Vega 64 uses AMD's Vega 10 chip on a 14 nm GlobalFoundries process, part of the GCN 5.0 architecture. Transistor counts are close, with the Vega 10 at 12,500 million and the GP102 at 11,800 million, and die sizes are similar at 495 mm² and 471 mm² respectively. The resulting transistor densities are nearly identical at 25.3M per mm² for the Vega 10 and 25.1M per mm² for the GP102.

The compute resource allocation differs in ways that explain the benchmark results. The Vega 64 has more shading units (4096 versus 3840) and more TMUs (256 versus 240), but far fewer ROPs (64 versus 96). This configuration suggests the Vega 10 prioritizes shader and texture throughput, while the GP102 allocates more hardware to pixel processing. The Vega 64's FP16 performance at a 2:1 ratio indicates a design that treats half-precision as a first-class compute mode, whereas the Tesla P40's 1:64 ratio shows Pascal's approach of heavily downclocking FP16, effectively treating it as a legacy feature.

The Tesla P40 belongs to the Tesla Pascal (Pxx) generation, with its predecessor being Tesla Maxwell and its successor Tesla Volta. The Vega 64 comes from the Vega (RX Vega) generation, succeeding Polaris and preceding Navi. The Tesla P40's lack of display outputs marks it as a compute and inference accelerator, while the Vega 64's full display output suite positions it as a consumer graphics card. The API support also reflects their different vintages: the Tesla P40 supports Vulkan 1.4, while the Vega 64 tops out at Vulkan 1.3.

Both cards lack ray tracing and tensor cores, as neither architecture included such hardware. The Tesla P40's release date of September 2016 predates the Vega 64's August 2017 launch by nearly a year, yet both are now end-of-life products. The launch MSRP for the Tesla P40 was 5,699 USD, while the Vega 64 launched at 499 USD.

The Verdict

The data paints a clear picture for different use cases. The NVIDIA Tesla P40 is the choice for applications that need massive memory capacity, with 24 GB available versus the Vega 64's 8 GB. Its higher pixel rate of 147.0 GPixel/s and 96 ROPs also make it more capable in rasterization-heavy graphics workloads, as reflected in its Vulkan benchmark victory. The database places it at the 89th percentile with an average score of 65095, firmly in the upper tier of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals, including the AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 and AMD Radeon VII, all cluster within 2 percent of its average score, confirming its competitive position among high-end accelerators.

The AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 suits workloads that benefit from higher memory bandwidth and stronger compute throughput. Its 483.8 GB/s of bandwidth exceeds the Tesla P40's 347.1 GB/s, and its FP32 output of 12.66 TFLOPS and FP16 output of 25.33 TFLOPS both surpass the Pascal card. The Vega 64's OpenCL victory, however narrow, supports its compute credentials. The display outputs give it versatility that the Tesla P40 simply does not offer. Its 86th percentile ranking and average score of 50001 place it in a different performance tier, though its direct head-to-head results against the Tesla P40 are remarkably close.

The average benchmark score gap is the most striking statistic in this comparison. A 30 percent difference in average score between two cards that trade 1 percent margins in shared tests suggests the Vega 64's additional benchmark entries, including a 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 1669, significantly impact its average. The Tesla P40's narrower benchmark profile may flatter its overall position. Buyers should weigh the specific workloads they intend to run rather than relying solely on average scores.

For compute and inference tasks with large memory footprints, the Tesla P40's 24 GB capacity and 89th percentile ranking make it the data-driven choice. For general-purpose graphics, display output, and half-precision compute, the Vega 64's feature set and higher bandwidth are more practical. The launch MSRP difference is substantial, with the Tesla P40 at 5,699 USD and the Vega 64 at 499 USD, but both are end-of-life products where current availability and pricing will vary. The benchmark data ultimately shows two capable accelerators with complementary strengths, and the right pick depends entirely on whether memory capacity or bandwidth and compute flexibility matter more for the intended workload.