NVIDIA CMP 30HX vs NVIDIA TITAN X Pascal Comparison

# NVIDIA TITAN X Pascal vs NVIDIA CMP 30HX

The NVIDIA TITAN X Pascal and NVIDIA CMP 30HX target entirely different use cases despite sharing the NVIDIA brand. The TITAN X Pascal, a 2016 flagship from the GeForce 10 generation, delivers substantially higher compute performance across both available benchmark suites, while the CMP 30HX, a 2021 mining-focused card, offers lower absolute scores but does so in a more power-efficient package. Benchmark data shows the TITAN X Pascal winning both head-to-head tests, with its largest margin coming in Vulkan workloads where it leads by 24%. The average benchmark scores reinforce this gap: the TITAN X Pascal averages 72,098 points versus 63,842 for the CMP 30HX, a difference of roughly 13%. However, the CMP 30HX's lower power draw and smaller physical footprint may appeal to specific deployment scenarios where absolute performance is secondary to operational efficiency.

Where Each One Wins

The TITAN X Pascal dominates in every measured benchmark category, making it the clear choice for compute-heavy applications that leverage OpenCL or Vulkan APIs. Its Geekbench OpenCL score of 66,696 and Vulkan score of 77,499 both exceed the CMP 30HX's corresponding results of 65,199 and 62,484. The Vulkan gap is particularly pronounced: the TITAN X Pascal outperforms the CMP 30HX by 24%, indicating a significant advantage in workloads that utilize this modern graphics API. This makes the TITAN X Pascal better suited for general-purpose GPU computing, graphics rendering, and any application that can take advantage of Vulkan's low-overhead design. Its 91st percentile ranking among all GPUs, compared to the CMP 30HX's 89th percentile, further confirms its superior standing in the broader GPU landscape.

The CMP 30HX, while losing both benchmark comparisons, presents a different kind of winning proposition. Its 125 W TDP is exactly half of the TITAN X Pascal's 250 W rating, and its suggested power supply requirement of 300 W is similarly half of the 600 W demanded by the TITAN X Pascal. This power efficiency profile, combined with its lack of display outputs and PCIe 1.0 x4 interface, signals a card designed for dedicated compute environments where power density and simplicity matter more than raw throughput. The CMP 30HX also carries a notably lower launch MSRP of 799 USD compared to the TITAN X Pascal's 1,199 USD. For workloads that are memory-bandwidth sensitive rather than compute-bound, the CMP 30HX's GDDR6 memory at 14 Gbps effective offers a newer memory technology, even though its 336.0 GB/s bandwidth trails the TITAN X Pascal's 480.4 GB/s.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has higher raw compute performance?

A: The NVIDIA TITAN X Pascal delivers 10.97 TFLOPS of FP32 performance versus 5.027 TFLOPS for the CMP 30HX, more than doubling the CMP's compute throughput. This translates directly to its 2.3% OpenCL and 24% Vulkan benchmark wins.

Q: How do the memory subsystems compare?

A: The TITAN X Pascal features 12 GB of GDDR5X on a 384-bit bus with 480.4 GB/s bandwidth, while the CMP 30HX offers 6 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus with 336.0 GB/s bandwidth. The TITAN X Pascal provides double the capacity and 43% more bandwidth.

Q: What are the power requirements for each card?

A: The TITAN X Pascal has a 250 W TDP and requires a 600 W power supply with 1x 6-pin and 1x 8-pin connectors. The CMP 30HX has a 125 W TDP, needs only a 300 W power supply with a single 8-pin connector, making it far easier to integrate into existing systems.

Q: Can the CMP 30HX be used for display output?

A: No. The CMP 30HX has no display outputs, while the TITAN X Pascal includes 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0, and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a connections. The CMP is exclusively designed for compute or mining operations.

Q: How do the GPUs rank against all other GPUs?

A: The TITAN X Pascal sits in the 91st percentile of all GPUs, while the CMP 30HX ranks in the 89th percentile. Both are above-average performers, but the TITAN X Pascal holds a clear overall advantage.

Q: What are the closest competing GPUs for each card?

A: The TITAN X Pascal's nearest rival is the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64, which scores 72,379 (0.4% ahead). The CMP 30HX's closest competitor is the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT LP, which scores 63,830 (statistically tied at 0% delta).

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The Geekbench OpenCL test shows a relatively narrow margin between these two cards. The TITAN X Pascal scores 66,696 against the CMP 30HX's 65,199, a 2.3% advantage. This modest gap suggests that in OpenCL-heavy workloads, the CMP 30HX's newer Turing architecture partially compensates for its lower shading unit count—1,408 versus 3,584—and reduced memory bandwidth. The 2.3% difference falls well within the range of variance seen between closely matched GPUs; for context, the TITAN X Pascal's nearest rival, the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64, is only 0.4% ahead, and the AMD Radeon RX 6650M trails by just 0.5%. OpenCL performance appears to be a relatively level playing field where both architectures execute similar workloads with comparable efficiency.

The Geekbench Vulkan test tells a completely different story. Here, the TITAN X Pascal achieves 77,499 points versus 62,484 for the CMP 30HX, a commanding 24% victory. This is the single largest performance gap between the two cards in any measured metric. The TITAN X Pascal's Vulkan score is actually higher than its OpenCL score by over 10,000 points, while the CMP 30HX's Vulkan score drops by nearly 3,000 points relative to its OpenCL result. This divergence likely reflects architectural differences in how each GPU handles Vulkan's explicit command processing and draw call overhead. The TITAN X Pascal's massive 384-bit memory bus and 96 ROPs may provide significant advantages in Vulkan's memory-heavy workloads, while the CMP 30HX's reduced ROP count (48) and narrower 192-bit bus become bottlenecks under similar conditions. Given that the TITAN X Pascal's nearest rival in overall average score, the AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition, sits just 1.7% ahead, the TITAN X Pascal's Vulkan dominance represents its single strongest competitive position.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ fundamentally across nearly every specification category. The TITAN X Pascal uses the GP102 chip on a 16 nm process, while the CMP 30HX employs the TU116 chip on a 12 nm process. Transistor counts diverge sharply: the TITAN X Pascal packs 11,800 million transistors on a 471 mm² die, whereas the CMP 30HX contains 6,600 million transistors on a 284 mm² die. Transistor density is similar—25.1M per mm² versus 23.2M per mm²—but the TITAN X Pascal's much larger die accommodates substantially more compute hardware.

Clock speeds favor the CMP 30HX in raw terms: 1530 MHz base and 1785 MHz boost versus 1417 MHz base and 1531 MHz boost for the TITAN X Pascal. However, the TITAN X Pascal's superior hardware resources more than compensate. Its 3,584 shading units, 224 TMUs, and 96 ROPs dwarf the CMP 30HX's 1,408 shading units, 88 TMUs, and 48 ROPs. The memory systems differ in capacity, type, bus width, and bandwidth, as detailed previously. Power consumption also diverges dramatically, with the TITAN X Pascal drawing 250 W against the CMP 30HX's 125 W. Physical dimensions vary as well: the TITAN X Pascal measures 267 mm by 112 mm by 40 mm, while the CMP 30HX is shorter at 229 mm, slightly shorter in height at 111 mm, and thinner at 35 mm. The TITAN X Pascal uses PCIe 3.0 x16, while the CMP 30HX is limited to PCIe 1.0 x4. Display outputs exist on the TITAN X Pascal but are absent from the CMP 30HX. The cards also differ in release timing—August 2016 versus February 2021—and the TITAN X Pascal has a defined successor in the GeForce 20 series, while the CMP 30HX has no predecessor or successor listed.

Architecture Differences

The TITAN X Pascal is built on NVIDIA's Pascal architecture, introduced with the GeForce 10 generation. Its 16 nm TSMC process and 11,800 million transistor count represent a high-water mark for that era, delivering 10.97 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. Notably, its FP16 performance is severely limited at 171.5 GFLOPS with a 1:64 ratio, meaning half-precision workloads run at a tiny fraction of single-precision speed. This makes the TITAN X Pascal poorly suited for AI or machine learning tasks that rely on FP16 acceleration.

The CMP 30HX employs the newer Turing architecture on TSMC's 12 nm process, despite being released four years later. Turing brings significant architectural improvements, most notably in FP16 performance: the CMP 30HX achieves 10.05 TFLOPS of FP16 at a 2:1 ratio, which is nearly double its FP32 throughput of 5.027 TFLOPS. This represents a fundamental shift in compute philosophy, prioritizing half-precision throughput that benefits modern compute workloads such as machine learning inference and certain rendering techniques. The CMP 30HX's 6,600 million transistors on a 284 mm² die achieve a slightly lower transistor density than the TITAN X Pascal, but the newer process node allows for higher clock speeds at lower power consumption.

Both cards share identical API support—DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4—and neither features dedicated ray tracing or tensor cores. The absence of RT cores and tensor cores places both cards firmly in the pre-accelerated-compute era, though the CMP 30HX's Turing architecture includes other modernizations invisible in these specifications. The CMP 30HX's PCIe 1.0 x4 interface is a stark departure from the TITAN X Pascal's PCIe 3.0 x16, limiting host-to-device data transfer rates but reflecting its intended use in mining rigs where host bandwidth is rarely a bottleneck. Similarly, the CMP 30HX's lack of display outputs confirms its role as a dedicated compute accelerator rather than a general-purpose graphics card. In contrast, the TITAN X Pascal's full display output suite—DVI, HDMI 2.0, and three DisplayPort 1.4a connections—marks it as a traditional enthusiast graphics card capable of driving multiple high-resolution displays.