NVIDIA CMP 40HX vs NVIDIA RTX A4500 Comparison

The NVIDIA RTX A4500 and NVIDIA CMP 40HX represent two very different interpretations of the Ampere and Turing architectures, respectively. The A4500 is a workstation-focused card with a full suite of display outputs and professional drivers, while the CMP 40HX is a mining-specific product stripped of video outputs and limited to a legacy PCIe interface. The benchmark data reveals a substantial performance gulf, with the A4500 leading by 51.9% in OpenCL and 66.9% in Vulkan, but the CMP 40HX still holds its own in the 93rd percentile of all GPUs, suggesting it was not a weak chip—just one built for a very different purpose.

FAQ

Q: How much faster is the NVIDIA RTX A4500 than the CMP 40HX in OpenCL benchmarks?

A: The A4500 scores 141,837 in Geekbench OpenCL, while the CMP 40HX scores 93,395. This gives the A4500 a 51.9% advantage, making it the clear winner in this compute-oriented test.

Q: Does the CMP 40HX have any benchmark where it beats the RTX A4500?

A: No. In the head-to-head results, the A4500 wins both available tests (OpenCL and Vulkan). The CMP 40HX records zero wins, while the A4500 secures two victories.

Q: Why does the CMP 40HX have no display outputs?

A: The CMP 40HX is explicitly designed for mining, as indicated by its generation label "Mining GPUs." It ships with "No outputs" for display connectivity, meaning it cannot be used as a traditional graphics card for monitors. This is a fundamental design difference from the A4500, which offers 4x DisplayPort 1.4a.

Q: What is the difference in memory bandwidth between the two cards?

A: The RTX A4500 provides 640.0 GB/s of bandwidth from its 20 GB GDDR6 memory on a 320-bit bus. The CMP 40HX offers 448.0 GB/s from 8 GB GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus. The A4500 thus has 42.9% more bandwidth, which directly impacts data-heavy workloads.

Q: How do the two cards compare in transistor count and die size?

A: The A4500 uses the GA102 chip with 28,300 million transistors on a 628 mm² die (8 nm Samsung process). The CMP 40HX uses the TU106 chip with 10,800 million transistors on a 445 mm² die (12 nm TSMC process). The A4500 has roughly 2.6 times more transistors.

Q: What is the average benchmark score percentile for each card?

A: Both cards sit in the 93rd percentile of all GPUs. However, the A4500 has a higher average benchmark score of 91,671, while the CMP 40HX averages 85,637. This places the A4500 about 7% higher on average.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs are built on fundamentally different architectures, which explains much of the performance gap. The RTX A4500 uses the GA102 chip on the Ampere architecture, fabricated on an 8 nm process by Samsung. In contrast, the CMP 40HX relies on the older TU106 chip from the Turing architecture, produced on a 12 nm process by TSMC. This process difference alone accounts for a significant transistor density gap: the A4500 packs 45.1M transistors per mm², while the CMP 40HX manages only 24.3M per mm².

The raw compute resources diverge sharply. The A4500 features 7,168 shading units, 224 texture mapping units, and 96 raster operation units. The CMP 40HX, by comparison, has just 2,304 shading units, 144 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. This means the A4500 has over three times the shading units and 1.5 times the ROPs, which directly correlates with its higher fill rates and floating-point throughput.

Ray tracing and tensor core counts also differ. The A4500 includes 56 RT cores and 224 tensor cores, while the CMP 40HX has 36 RT cores and 288 tensor cores. Interestingly, the CMP 40HX has more tensor cores, but this does not translate to overall performance wins, likely due to the much lower shader count and memory bandwidth. The FP32 compute rate tells the story: the A4500 achieves 23.65 TFLOPS, while the CMP 40HX reaches only 7.603 TFLOPS. The FP16 performance is also telling—the A4500 delivers 23.65 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio with FP32), whereas the CMP 40HX hits 15.21 TFLOPS but with a 2:1 ratio, indicating it trades precision for speed.

The bus interface is another major architectural difference. The A4500 uses PCIe 4.0 x16, which provides a high-bandwidth connection to the host system. The CMP 40HX, however, is limited to PCIe 1.0 x4—a severely restricted interface that would bottleneck data transfers in any interactive workload. This reinforces its mining-only design, where data is written once and read rarely.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head results are unambiguous, with the RTX A4500 dominating both tests. In Geekbench OpenCL, the A4500 scores 141,837 versus the CMP 40HX’s 93,395—a 51.9% delta in favor of the workstation card. This margin is substantial and reflects the A4500’s superior shader count, memory bandwidth, and compute throughput. For any OpenCL-based application, the A4500 is the clear choice.

The Vulkan test shows an even wider gap. The A4500 posts 129,980, while the CMP 40HX manages 77,879. That is a 66.9% advantage for the A4500. Vulkan is a low-level API that often scales well with raw hardware resources, so the A4500’s larger GPU and faster memory subsystem pay off disproportionately here. The CMP 40HX’s weaker FP32 performance and limited PCIe bandwidth likely exacerbate the difference in this test.

Looking at the nearest rivals for context, the A4500’s average score of 91,671 puts it just 0.6% ahead of the RTX A4500 Mobile (91,134) and 0.9% behind the AMD Radeon Instinct MI60 (92,466). It also leads the NVIDIA Quadro GP100 by 4.8% and the AMD Radeon PRO W7600 by 5.2%. The CMP 40HX, with an average of 85,637, trails the AMD Radeon PRO W7600 by 1.7% and the Quadro GP100 by 2.1%, but beats the AMD Radeon PRO W6600 by 4.4% and the Radeon Pro Vega 64X by 5.8%. This positions the CMP 40HX as a mid-tier performer despite its mining focus.

Specification Differences

The specification sheet highlights how differently these cards are engineered. Memory capacity is a major split: the A4500 has 20 GB of GDDR6, while the CMP 40HX has only 8 GB. The memory bus width also differs—320 bits for the A4500 versus 256 bits for the CMP 40HX—which contributes to the bandwidth gap (640.0 GB/s versus 448.0 GB/s).

Clock speeds are close at the boost level, with both cards hitting 1650 MHz. The base clocks differ, though: the A4500 runs at 1050 MHz, while the CMP 40HX starts higher at 1470 MHz. Memory clocks also favor the A4500, which runs at 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective) versus the CMP 40HX’s 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective).

Pixel and texture rates follow the shader count. The A4500 achieves 158.4 GPixel/s and 369.6 GTexel/s, while the CMP 40HX delivers 105.6 GPixel/s and 237.6 GTexel/s. Power consumption is relatively close: 200 W for the A4500 versus 185 W for the CMP 40HX. Both use a single 8-pin power connector and are dual-slot cards, though the suggested PSU differs (550 W for the A4500, 450 W for the CMP 40HX).

Physical dimensions vary slightly. The A4500 is 267 mm long (10.5 inches) and 112 mm tall (4.4 inches), while the CMP 40HX is shorter at 229 mm (9 inches) with the same height and a defined width of 35 mm (1.4 inches). The most striking difference is display outputs: the A4500 offers 4x DisplayPort 1.4a, while the CMP 40HX has none. The CMP 40HX also carries a launch MSRP of 699 USD, a figure the data notes without further pricing commentary.

The Verdict

The data points to the RTX A4500 as the superior performer in every measured benchmark. It wins both head-to-head tests by margins of 51.9% and 66.9%, and it holds a higher average benchmark score (91,671 versus 85,637). The A4500 also offers 20 GB of memory versus 8 GB, a wider 320-bit bus, and full display outputs, making it a versatile tool for professional workloads. Its 93rd percentile ranking matches the CMP 40HX, but the A4500 achieves this with significantly more headroom.

For buyers seeking a general-purpose GPU for compute, rendering, or any task requiring video output, the RTX A4500 is the only viable choice between these two. The CMP 40HX, by contrast, is a specialized product with no display outputs and a restrictive PCIe 1.0 x4 interface. Its higher base clock and extra tensor cores (288 versus 224) do not compensate for its lower overall compute throughput. The CMP 40HX might still serve a niche role in headless compute environments, but the benchmark data shows it lags behind the A4500 in every common API test.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX A4500 wins in all scenarios that involve interactive or visual workloads. Its 4x DisplayPort 1.4a outputs make it suitable for multi-monitor setups, and its 20 GB memory capacity is ample for large datasets. The OpenCL score of 141,837 suggests strong performance in compute-heavy applications like scientific simulation or machine learning inference. The Vulkan score of 129,980 indicates it also handles graphics API workloads efficiently, making it a candidate for content creation or real-time visualization.

The CMP 40HX has no benchmark wins, so its strengths are more about specific specifications than measured performance. Its 288 tensor cores exceed the A4500’s 224, which could theoretically help in tensor-focused operations, though the FP16 2:1 ratio implies lower precision throughput. Its higher base clock (1470 MHz versus 1050 MHz) gives it a faster idle-to-load transition, but the boost clock is identical at 1650 MHz. The CMP 40HX’s smaller physical footprint (229 mm versus 267 mm) might fit in tighter chassis, and its lower TDP (185 W versus 200 W) slightly reduces power draw. Ultimately, the CMP 40HX is a card for a specific mining use case, not for competitive performance against a workstation GPU. The data shows that any task benchmarked—OpenCL or Vulkan—will heavily favor the A4500.