NVIDIA A10M vs NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell Comparison

Opening paragraph: The NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell and NVIDIA A10M represent two very different generations of NVIDIA professional hardware, separated by a significant architectural leap and a wide performance gap. The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell, built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with the GB202 chip, is a current-generation powerhouse that sits in the 98th percentile of all GPUs, while the A10M, an Ampere-generation server part based on GA102, remains a capable but end-of-life option in the 96th percentile. The data shows a decisive overall advantage for the newer card, with an average benchmark score of 182,109 versus 135,230 for the A10M, a difference that places the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell roughly 35% ahead in aggregate performance. However, the comparison is not merely about raw speed; it is a study in how architecture, memory, and power efficiency shape professional workloads.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell wins in every measurable category, but the magnitude of its victories varies by workload type. The most striking win comes in the Geekbench OpenCL benchmark, where the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell scores 254,116 against the A10M’s 135,230 — a 87.9% delta. This is a compute-heavy test that stresses raw FP32 throughput and memory bandwidth, both of which the Blackwell card dominates. With 66.94 TFLOPS of FP32 performance versus 23.44 TFLOPS on the A10M, the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell is built for brute-force parallel computation, making it the clear choice for rendering, simulation, and AI inference tasks that rely on massive shader throughput.

The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell also wins decisively in memory-bound scenarios. Its 48 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 384-bit bus delivers 1.34 TB/s of bandwidth, compared to the A10M’s 20 GB of GDDR6 on a 320-bit bus at 500.2 GB/s. For workloads like large dataset processing, high-resolution texture streaming, or multi-model AI training, the Blackwell card offers nearly 2.7 times the bandwidth and 2.4 times the capacity, meaning fewer bottlenecks and larger working sets.

The A10M, by contrast, has no single metric where it outperforms the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell. Its only advantage is qualitative: as a 150 W single-slot card with no display outputs, it is designed for dense server deployments where power and space are at a premium. The data does not show it winning any benchmark, but its lower power draw (150 W versus 300 W) and single-slot form factor make it a viable option for high-density compute racks where the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell’s dual-slot footprint and 16-pin power connector would be less practical. In short, the A10M wins on deployment flexibility, not performance.

Architecture Differences

The two cards are separated by two full architecture generations. The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell uses the Blackwell 2.0 architecture on a 5 nm TSMC process, packing 92,200 million transistors into a 750 mm² die. The A10M uses the older Ampere architecture on an 8 nm Samsung process, with 28,300 million transistors on a 628 mm² die. This translates to a massive density advantage: the Blackwell chip achieves 122.9 million transistors per mm² versus 45.1 million on Ampere, explaining how the newer card fits nearly 3.3 times as many transistors with only a 19% larger die.

Core counts tell a similar story. The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell features 14,080 shading units, 440 TMUs, and 160 ROPs, while the A10M has 7,168 shading units, 224 TMUs, and 80 ROPs — exactly half the shader and TMU counts, and half the ROPs. The Blackwell card also doubles the ray tracing and tensor core counts: 110 RT cores and 440 tensor cores versus 56 RT cores and 224 tensor cores on the A10M. This doubling is consistent across the board, suggesting a deliberate scaling of the architecture rather than a simple clock boost.

Clock speeds also favor the newer card. The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell runs at a base of 1740 MHz and boosts to 2377 MHz, while the A10M operates at 975 MHz base and 1635 MHz boost. The 742 MHz difference in boost clocks is substantial, but it is the combination of higher clocks and more cores that yields the 2.9x FP32 throughput advantage. The memory subsystem is entirely different as well: GDDR7 on the Blackwell card versus GDDR6 on the A10M, with the former running at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective) versus 1563 MHz (12.5 Gbps effective) on the latter.

FAQ

Q: Which card is faster in Geekbench OpenCL?

A: The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell scores 254,116 in Geekbench OpenCL, which is 87.9% higher than the A10M’s 135,230 in the same test.

Q: What is the memory capacity difference?

A: The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell has 48 GB of GDDR7 memory, while the A10M has 20 GB of GDDR6. The Blackwell card also offers 1.34 TB/s of bandwidth versus 500.2 GB/s on the A10M.

Q: How do the power requirements compare?

A: The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell has a TDP of 300 W and requires a 700 W power supply, while the A10M has a TDP of 150 W and a suggested 450 W PSU.

Q: Are both cards compatible with the same PCIe generation?

A: No. The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell uses PCIe 5.0 x16, while the A10M uses PCIe 4.0 x16.

Q: What is the production status of each card?

A: The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell is listed as Active production, while the A10M is End-of-life, with its predecessor noted as Tesla Turing and successor as Server Ada.

Q: Does the A10M have any display outputs?

A: No. The A10M has "No outputs" listed, whereas the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell offers 4x DisplayPort 2.1b.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ in nearly every core specification. The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell uses the GB202 chip on a 5 nm process, while the A10M uses GA102 on 8 nm. Transistor counts are 92,200 million versus 28,300 million, and die sizes are 750 mm² versus 628 mm². The Blackwell card has 14,080 shading units, 440 TMUs, 160 ROPs, 110 RT cores, and 440 tensor cores; the A10M has 7,168 shading units, 224 TMUs, 80 ROPs, 56 RT cores, and 224 tensor cores.

Clock speeds differ significantly: 1740 MHz base and 2377 MHz boost on the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell, versus 975 MHz base and 1635 MHz boost on the A10M. Memory is 48 GB GDDR7 on a 384-bit bus at 1.34 TB/s for the Blackwell card, compared to 20 GB GDDR6 on a 320-bit bus at 500.2 GB/s for the A10M. The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell has a 300 W TDP and requires a 16-pin power connector with a 700 W suggested PSU; the A10M has a 150 W TDP with an 8-pin EPS connector and a 450 W suggested PSU.

The form factors differ as well: the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell is dual-slot with dimensions of 267 mm x 111 mm x 40 mm, while the A10M is single-slot with dimensions of 267 mm x 112 mm (width not listed). The bus interface is PCIe 5.0 x16 on the Blackwell card versus PCIe 4.0 x16 on the A10M. Display outputs are 4x DisplayPort 2.1b on the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell and none on the A10M. The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell has a launch MSRP of 5,099 USD; the A10M has no launch MSRP listed.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The only direct head-to-head benchmark available is Geekbench OpenCL, and it is a decisive victory for the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell. The newer card scores 254,116, which is 118,886 points higher than the A10M’s 135,230. The delta of 87.9% is significant, but it understates the real-world performance gulf because the OpenCL test is sensitive to both shader count and memory bandwidth — areas where the Blackwell card holds a 2x and 2.68x advantage, respectively.

Looking at the broader benchmark picture, the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell also posts a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 9,579.5 and a Geekbench Vulkan score of 282,631. The A10M has no corresponding scores in these tests, but the Vulkan result on the Blackwell card is 11.2% higher than its own OpenCL score, suggesting that the architecture scales well with modern graphics APIs. The A10M’s single OpenCL score places it at 96th percentile of all GPUs, while the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell sits at 98th percentile — a two-percentile gap that masks a nearly 35% average score difference.

The nearest rivals for each card illustrate their relative market positions. The RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell’s average score of 182,109 puts it just 1.4% behind the RTX 5000 Ada Generation (184,664) and 0.9% behind the A100 SXM4 80 GB (183,725), while beating the RTX 4090 D (178,050) by 2.3%. The A10M’s average score of 135,230 is essentially tied with the RTX 4000 Ada Generation (135,218, 0% delta) and slightly behind the Radeon PRO W6800 (135,396, -0.1%). This shows that the A10M competes in a lower performance tier, roughly equivalent to a mid-range Ada workstation card, whereas the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell sits at the top of the professional stack, rivaling and sometimes exceeding the previous Ada flagship.

The performance difference is not uniform across all metrics. The pixel rate for the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell is 380.3 GPixel/s versus 130.8 GPixel/s on the A10M, a 2.9x advantage that matters for high-resolution rendering. The texture rate is 1,045.9 GTexel/s versus 366.2 GTexel/s, also a 2.9x gap. These consistent ratios suggest that the Blackwell card’s advantage is not due to a single feature but to a holistic architectural improvement — more cores, higher clocks, faster memory, and a denser process node all contributing to a uniformly faster card. The A10M remains a functional server GPU for light compute, but the data makes it clear that it is outclassed by the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell in every measurable way.