Intel Arc B580 vs NVIDIA Tesla K40m Comparison

The Intel Arc B580 and NVIDIA Tesla K40m make for one of the stranger comparisons in the database: a modern gaming GPU from the Battlemage generation set against an end-of-life datacenter accelerator from the Kepler era. The recorded numbers show a lopsided contest. The B580 wins the only head-to-head benchmark available, Geekbench OpenCL, by a massive margin, and its broader benchmark coverage confirms a card that tracks in the 68th percentile of all GPUs versus the K40m's 65th. That percentile gap looks narrow on paper, but it collapses the moment you look at what each card actually does, how it connects to a host system, and what software it can run. The K40m has no display outputs at all; the B580 is built entirely around output and interactivity.

Where Each One Wins

The honest answer for the K40m is: nowhere, in the recorded data. The head-to-head set contains exactly one test, Geekbench OpenCL, and the Arc B580 takes it with a score of 92821 against 19885, a 366.8 percent difference. That is not a close result, and the summary win counters (one win for the B580, zero for the K40m) reflect it. There is no benchmark in the database where the Tesla K40m comes out ahead of the B580.

What the K40m still represents is a different product category. It is a passive-output compute card with a 384-bit memory bus, which is wider than the B580's 192-bit path, and its CUDA heritage made it a workhorse for its time. The database records it as end-of-life, sitting between the Tesla Fermi generation before it and Tesla Maxwell after it. Its nearest rivals in the recorded data are professional cards of its own era: the AMD FirePro W7000 sits 0.1 percent ahead, the Radeon RX 6650 XT is 0.6 percent behind, the FirePro D300 trails by 1.3 percent, and the Quadro K5200 by 1.4 percent. That peer group tells the story: the K40m measured like a professional compute part, not a gaming part.

The B580's rival set is entirely different. The Radeon RX 580 2048SP averages 0.2 percent higher, the GeForce RTX 2080 sits 0.6 percent behind, the RTX 3080 is 0.7 percent ahead, and the P106-100 leads by 1 percent. Trading blows with cards like those, while offering ray tracing cores and modern API support, is where the B580 earns its keep.

Architecture Differences

The generational gap between these two is enormous. The K40m's GK110B chip is built on a 28 nm process at TSMC, packing 7,080 million transistors into a 561 mm² die, which works out to a transistor density of 12.6M per mm². The B580's BMG-G21 uses a 5 nm TSMC process, fits 19,600 million transistors into just 272 mm², and reaches 72.1M transistors per mm². That is nearly three times the transistor count on less than half the die area, a direct consequence of more than two decades of process advancement between the two nodes.

Architecturally they share nothing beyond the company-crossing basics. The K40m is Kepler, designed for GPU compute in the datacenter, with 2880 shading units and 240 texture units but only 48 render outputs. The B580 is Xe2-HPG, the Battlemage (Arc 5) generation, with 2560 shading units, 160 texture units, and 80 render outputs. The B580 also carries 20 dedicated ray tracing cores; the K40m has none, and neither card lists tensor cores.

Clock behavior tells the rest of the story. The K40m runs at a 745 MHz base with an 876 MHz boost. The B580 runs a flat 2670 MHz, more than three times the K40m's boost clock, which is how it converts slightly fewer shading units into 13.67 TFLOPS of FP32 against the K40m's 5.046 TFLOPS. The B580 also supports FP16 at 27.34 TFLOPS in a 2:1 relationship; the K40m lists no FP16 figure.

Memory is the one area where the older card takes a structural angle: both have 12 GB, but the K40m spreads it across a 384-bit GDDR5 bus at 288.4 GB/s of bandwidth, while the B580 uses a 192-bit GDDR6 bus delivering 456.0 GB/s. Wider bus, slower memory, less bandwidth.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The direct comparison data is short but decisive. Geekbench OpenCL: 92821 for the Arc B580, 19885 for the Tesla K40m, a 366.8 percent win for Intel. OpenCL is the one API both cards can be measured through, which itself is telling, since the K40m predates most of the modern graphics stack the B580 was benchmarked with.

The B580's wider recorded results fill in the picture. It posts 3068 in 3DMark Steel Nomad (DX12), 109672 in Geekbench Vulkan, 15748 in PassMark G3D, and 7729 in PassMark GPU Compute. Its PassMark DirectX results run 183 for DX9, 128 for DX11, and 76 each for DX10 and DX12, plus 709 in G2D. The K40m has no recorded results in any of these tests, and its DirectX support level (12 at 11_1 feature level, versus the B580's 12 Ultimate at 12_2) explains why. Its Vulkan support stops at version 1.2.175 against the B580's 1.4.

Throughput metrics reinforce the gap. The B580 delivers 213.6 GPixel/s of pixel fill against the K40m's 52.56 GPixel/s, and 427.2 GTexel/s of texture fill against 210.2 GTexel/s. Both of those ratios favor the B580 by multiples, consistent with the single benchmark result.

FAQ

Q: Which card is faster in the benchmarks the database has for both?

A: The Arc B580, decisively. It wins Geekbench OpenCL 92821 to 19885, a 366.8 percent margin, and it is the only card of the two with recorded results in 3DMark, Vulkan, and PassMark graphics tests.

Q: Do both cards have 12 GB of memory?

A: Yes, both carry 12 GB. The B580 uses GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus at 456.0 GB/s; the K40m uses GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus at 288.4 GB/s. Same capacity, different speed.

Q: Can the Tesla K40m drive a monitor?

A: No. It has no display outputs. The B580 has one HDMI 2.1a port and three DisplayPort 2.1 ports.

Q: How do their power requirements compare?

A: The K40m has a 245 W TDP and a suggested PSU of 550 W. The B580 has a 190 W TDP, a 550 W figure is not applicable here, its suggested PSU is 450 W, and it draws power through a single 8-pin connector.

Q: Which PCIe slot does each use?

A: The B580 uses PCIe 4.0 x8; the K40m uses PCIe 3.0 x16. Note the B580's link is narrower but on a newer generation of the interface.

Q: Are either of these still in production?

A: The B580 is listed as active, released 2024-12-12, succeeding Intel's Alchemist generation. The K40m is end-of-life, released 2013-11-21, sitting between Tesla Fermi and Tesla Maxwell in NVIDIA's lineage.

Specification Differences

• Manufacturer and chip: Intel BMG-G21 (Xe2-HPG, Battlemage) versus NVIDIA GK110B (Kepler, Tesla K series)
• Process: 5 nm versus 28 nm, both on TSMC
• Transistors and density: 19,600 million at 72.1M/mm² versus 7,080 million at 12.6M/mm², on dies of 272 mm² versus 561 mm²
• Clocks: 2670 MHz base and boost versus 745 MHz base and 876 MHz boost; memory at 19 Gbps effective versus 6 Gbps effective
• Compute units: 2560 shading units, 160 TMUs, 80 ROPs, 20 RT cores versus 2880 shading units, 240 TMUs, 48 ROPs, no RT cores
• Theoretical throughput: 13.67 TFLOPS FP32 and 27.34 TFLOPS FP16 versus 5.046 TFLOPS FP32, no FP16 listed
• Memory: 12 GB GDDR6, 192-bit, 456.0 GB/s versus 12 GB GDDR5, 384-bit, 288.4 GB/s
• Interface and outputs: PCIe 4.0 x8 with HDMI 2.1a plus three DisplayPort 2.1 versus PCIe 3.0 x16 with no outputs
• API support: DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), Vulkan 1.4, OpenGL 4.6 versus DirectX 12 (11_1), Vulkan 1.2.175, OpenGL 4.6
• Power: 190 W TDP, single 8-pin, 450 W suggested PSU versus 245 W TDP, 550 W suggested PSU
• Fill rates: 213.6 GPixel/s and 427.2 GTexel/s versus 52.56 GPixel/s and 210.2 GTexel/s
• Status: Active (2024-12-12) versus end-of-life (2013-11-21)
• Launch MSRP: 249 USD for the B580, 7,699 USD for the K40m

The Verdict

The data admits only one practical recommendation. For any workload the database measures, gaming or general GPU compute, the Arc B580 wins: a 366.8 percent OpenCL lead, roughly triple the FP32 throughput, more than four times the pixel fill, newer APIs, display outputs, lower TDP, and active production status. It trades blows with the RTX 2080 and RTX 3080 within a percent either way in the recorded averages.

The Tesla K40m's case rests on nothing in the measurements. It is an end-of-life compute accelerator with no display outputs, a launch MSRP of 7,699 USD, no benchmark wins against the B580, and a peer group of FirePro and Quadro cards from its own professional segment. Unless a specific legacy compute environment requires it, the recorded data points entirely to the Arc B580.