NVIDIA CMP 40HX vs NVIDIA TITAN X Pascal Comparison

Where Each One Wins

The benchmark data paints a clear and somewhat surprising picture: the NVIDIA CMP 40HX wins both head-to-head tests, but the margin of victory tells two very different stories. In Geekbench OpenCL, the CMP 40HX delivers a dominant 40% advantage over the TITAN X Pascal, scoring 93,395 against 66,696. That is a decisive, generation-over-generation leap in compute-heavy workloads. By contrast, in Geekbench Vulkan, the two cards are virtually inseparable: the CMP 40HX scores 77,879 versus 77,499 for the TITAN X Pascal — a mere 0.5% edge that falls within any reasonable margin of measurement error.

The TITAN X Pascal's only comfort comes from its average benchmark score relative to its own nearest rivals, where it sits at 72,098 and holds a 91st percentile ranking among all GPUs. The CMP 40HX, meanwhile, posts an average benchmark score of 85,637 and cracks the 93rd percentile. So while the TITAN X Pascal is no slouch in absolute terms, the CMP 40HX occupies a higher tier overall. The use-case split is straightforward: if your workload is OpenCL-centric (compute, rendering, data processing), the CMP 40HX is the runaway choice. If your workload leans on Vulkan (modern games, graphics APIs), the two cards are effectively equivalent, and the decision must be made on other factors.

FAQ

Q: Which card has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA CMP 40HX averages 85,637 across its benchmark suite, while the NVIDIA TITAN X Pascal averages 72,098. That is an 18.8% gap in favor of the CMP 40HX.

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

A: They are nearly identical. The CMP 40HX scores 77,879 and the TITAN X Pascal scores 77,499 in Geekbench Vulkan, a difference of just 0.5% — effectively a tie.

Q: Does the TITAN X Pascal win any benchmark outright?

A: No. In the head-to-head data, the CMP 40HX wins both Geekbench OpenCL (40% ahead) and Geekbench Vulkan (0.5% ahead). The TITAN X Pascal records zero wins.

Q: What is the biggest performance gap between the two cards?

A: Geekbench OpenCL shows the largest delta: the CMP 40HX scores 93,395 versus 66,696 for the TITAN X Pascal, a 40% difference.

Q: How does each card rank against all GPUs?

A: The CMP 40HX sits in the 93rd percentile, while the TITAN X Pascal sits in the 91st percentile. Both are high-end parts, but the CMP 40HX is ranked higher.

Q: What is the TITAN X Pascal's closest rival in its own benchmark tier?

A: The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64 is the nearest rival, with an average score of 72,379, just 0.4% higher than the TITAN X Pascal's 72,098.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head results are lopsided in favor of the CMP 40HX, but the magnitude varies wildly by test. In Geekbench OpenCL, the CMP 40HX produces 93,395 points, crushing the TITAN X Pascal's 66,696 points. That 40% delta is the single largest performance gap in this comparison. It reflects the CMP 40HX's Turing architecture advantage in compute-heavy parallel workloads — its FP32 throughput of 7.603 TFLOPS and FP16 of 15.21 TFLOPS (2:1 ratio) are utilized far more efficiently in OpenCL than the TITAN X Pascal's 10.97 TFLOPS FP32 and severely limited 171.5 GFLOPS FP16 (1:64 ratio). The CMP 40HX also has 36 RT cores and 288 tensor cores, which, while not directly benchmarked here, contribute to its compute versatility in API-agnostic workloads.

The Vulkan test tells a completely different story. The CMP 40HX scores 77,879, and the TITAN X Pascal scores 77,499 — a delta of just 0.5%. This near-parity suggests that Vulkan performance is not bottlenecked by raw FP32 compute or memory bandwidth in this case. Instead, the TITAN X Pascal's larger memory bus (384-bit versus 256-bit) and higher bandwidth (480.4 GB/s versus 448.0 GB/s) likely compensate for its older architecture. The CMP 40HX's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient for Vulkan workloads, but they do not provide the same headroom as the TITAN X Pascal's 12 GB of GDDR5X. In practice, these two cards should deliver nearly identical frame rates in Vulkan-based titles, making the 40% OpenCL gap the decisive factor for compute users.

Specification Differences

The specification sheet reveals fundamental divergences beyond just performance. The CMP 40HX has 2,304 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 64 ROPs, while the TITAN X Pascal carries 3,584 shading units, 224 TMUs, and 96 ROPs. In raw pixel and texture throughput, the TITAN X Pascal wins decisively: 147.0 GPixel/s versus 105.6 GPixel/s, and 342.9 GTexel/s versus 237.6 GTexel/s. Yet the CMP 40HX counters with higher clock speeds — 1470 MHz base and 1650 MHz boost versus 1417 MHz base and 1531 MHz boost — and superior memory frequency at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective) versus 1251 MHz (10 Gbps effective). The memory configurations also differ sharply: the CMP 40HX uses 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, while the TITAN X Pascal uses 12 GB of GDDR5X on a 384-bit bus. Despite the TITAN X Pascal's higher bandwidth (480.4 GB/s vs 448.0 GB/s), the CMP 40HX's newer memory technology contributes to its better compute scores.

Power and physical specifications further separate the two. The CMP 40HX draws 185 W TDP with a single 8-pin connector and a suggested 450 W PSU, while the TITAN X Pascal draws 250 W TDP with a 6-pin plus 8-pin configuration and a suggested 600 W PSU. The CMP 40HX is shorter at 229 mm (9 inches) versus 267 mm (10.5 inches), and slimmer at 35 mm (1.4 inches) versus 40 mm (1.6 inches). The CMP 40HX also uses a PCIe 1.0 x4 bus interface — a significant bottleneck for data transfer — while the TITAN X Pascal uses a full PCIe 3.0 x16 interface. Critically, the CMP 40HX has no display outputs, making it a pure compute or mining card, whereas the TITAN X Pascal offers 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0, and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a outputs.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gulf between these two cards is generational. The CMP 40HX is built on Turing, a 12 nm process from TSMC, with 10,800 million transistors on a 445 mm² die. The TITAN X Pascal uses the older Pascal architecture, fabricated on a 16 nm process, with 11,800 million transistors on a larger 471 mm² die. The transistor density is comparable — 24.3M per mm² for the CMP 40HX versus 25.1M per mm² for the TITAN X Pascal — but the Turing architecture brings features Pascal lacks entirely. The CMP 40HX includes 36 RT cores for ray tracing and 288 tensor cores for AI acceleration, both of which are absent from the TITAN X Pascal. These features enable DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) support on the CMP 40HX, while the TITAN X Pascal is limited to DirectX 12 (12_1). Both cards support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4, but the CMP 40HX's FP16 throughput of 15.21 TFLOPS (2:1) versus the TITAN X Pascal's 171.5 GFLOPS (1:64) is a 88.7x advantage in half-precision compute — a critical metric for modern machine learning and scientific workloads.

The TITAN X Pascal's older GP102 chip is larger and more heavily populated with shading units, but its architecture lacks the specialized hardware that makes the CMP 40HX competitive despite having 35% fewer shading units. The CMP 40HX also has a lower TDP (185 W vs 250 W), suggesting better performance-per-watt in compute tasks, though the TITAN X Pascal's higher pixel and texture rates indicate it retains an edge in rasterization-heavy workloads. The bus interface difference is stark: PCIe 1.0 x4 on the CMP 40HX versus PCIe 3.0 x16 on the TITAN X Pascal. This severely limits the CMP 40HX's ability to transfer data to and from the host system, which could negate some of its compute advantages in real-world systems where PCIe bandwidth is a bottleneck.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous for compute-heavy users: the NVIDIA CMP 40HX is the superior card. Its 40% lead in Geekbench OpenCL, coupled with its 93rd percentile ranking and RT/tensor core support, makes it the clear pick for OpenCL-based workloads, machine learning inference, or any task that leverages FP16 performance. The CMP 40HX also runs cooler at 185 W TDP and requires only a 450 W PSU, simplifying system integration.

However, the TITAN X Pascal is not without merit. Its 91st percentile ranking and near-identical Vulkan performance (0.5% delta) mean it remains viable for Vulkan-based applications. The 12 GB memory capacity and 480.4 GB/s bandwidth provide more headroom for large datasets, and the PCIe 3.0 x16 interface avoids the CMP 40HX's PCIe 1.0 x4 bottleneck. The TITAN X Pascal also offers display outputs, making it a functional graphics card, whereas the CMP 40HX has none.

For users who need a general-purpose GPU that can game (via Vulkan), drive displays, and handle moderate compute, the TITAN X Pascal is the safer choice — provided the 250 W TDP and 600 W PSU requirement are acceptable. For dedicated compute rigs, mining operations, or any workload where OpenCL performance is paramount, the CMP 40HX wins outright. The 40% OpenCL lead is too large to ignore, and the 0.5% Vulkan tie means there is no scenario where the TITAN X Pascal offers a meaningful performance advantage. The CMP 40HX is the benchmark winner with 2 wins to 0, and the verdict follows the data.