AMD FirePro W5130M vs NVIDIA GeForce 840M Comparison

The benchmark data shows a clear, if narrow, victory for the NVIDIA GeForce 840M over the AMD FirePro W5130M in the single available head-to-head test, with the NVIDIA part posting a 17.5% higher score. However, the two mobile GPUs are closely matched in overall capability, sitting at the 31st and 29th percentiles of all GPUs, respectively, and their underlying hardware philosophies differ significantly. The NVIDIA GeForce 840M is a compact, power-efficient Maxwell chip that wins on compute score and software API support, while the AMD FirePro W5130M is a larger, more feature-rich GCN part that dominates in raw memory bandwidth and pixel/texture throughput.

Where Each One Wins

NVIDIA GeForce 840M: The Compute and API Leader

The NVIDIA GeForce 840M secures its victory in the compute arena. In the Geekbench OpenCL test, it scores 5,764 points, which is a 17.5% advantage over the AMD FirePro W5130M's 4,904 points. This is the only direct benchmark in the data, and it represents a substantial lead for the NVIDIA part. Beyond raw score, the 840M supports newer software features, including Vulkan 1.4 compared to the AMD's Vulkan 1.2.170, and DirectX 12 (11_0) versus the AMD's DirectX 12 (11_1). This makes the NVIDIA GPU the more future-proof option for general-purpose compute and modern API adoption, even if its hardware specifications appear more modest on paper.

AMD FirePro W5130M: The Bandwidth and Throughput Champion

While the AMD FirePro W5130M loses the compute test, its architectural strengths point to wins in other workloads that are not captured by the single benchmark. The data reveals a decisive advantage in memory and fill-rate capabilities. The W5130M has a 128-bit memory bus paired with GDDR5 memory, delivering a bandwidth of 64.00 GB/s. This is exactly four times the 16.02 GB/s bandwidth of the NVIDIA GeForce 840M, which uses a 64-bit bus and DDR3 memory. This massive bandwidth advantage translates directly to higher pixel and texture rates: the AMD part achieves 14.80 GPixel/s and 29.60 GTexel/s, compared to the NVIDIA's 8.99 GPixel/s and 17.98 GTexel/s. For workloads heavily reliant on memory access and fill-rate—such as high-resolution texture streaming and certain rendering passes—the AMD FirePro W5130M is the clear hardware winner, despite its lower compute score.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce 840M has a higher average benchmark score of 5,322 points, compared to the AMD FirePro W5130M's 4,904 points. This represents a significant gap, with the NVIDIA part scoring about 8.5% higher on average.

Q: How much faster is the NVIDIA GeForce 840M in the Geekbench OpenCL test?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce 840M scores 5,764 points in Geekbench OpenCL, which is 17.5% higher than the AMD FirePro W5130M's score of 4,904 points. This is the primary head-to-head benchmark result in the data.

Q: Does the AMD FirePro W5130M have any hardware advantages over the NVIDIA GeForce 840M?

A: Yes. The AMD FirePro W5130M has four times the memory bandwidth (64.00 GB/s vs. 16.02 GB/s), double the shading units (512 vs. 384), double the texture mapping units (32 vs. 16), and double the render output units (16 vs. 8). It also has a wider 128-bit memory bus compared to the NVIDIA's 64-bit bus.

Q: What are the API support differences between the two?

A: The AMD FirePro W5130M supports DirectX 12 (11_1), while the NVIDIA GeForce 840M supports DirectX 12 (11_0). For Vulkan, the NVIDIA part supports version 1.4, while the AMD part supports an older version, 1.2.170. Both support OpenGL 4.6.

Q: How do these GPUs compare to their closest rivals?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce 840M's average score of 5,322 is nearly identical to its nearest rival, the NVIDIA GeForce 930A, which scores 5,317 (a 0.1% difference). The AMD FirePro W5130M's average score of 4,904 is 0.1% higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB's score of 4,901, though this is not a relevant class comparison.

Q: What is the production status and release timeframe for these GPUs?

A: Both GPUs are marked as End-of-life. The NVIDIA GeForce 840M was released on 2014-03-11, while the AMD FirePro W5130M was released later, on 2015-10-01.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The only direct benchmark comparison available is the Geekbench OpenCL test, and it is a decisive win for the NVIDIA GeForce 840M. The NVIDIA part scores 5,764 points, eclipsing the AMD FirePro W5130M's 4,904 points by a margin of 17.5%. This is a substantial gap in a general-purpose compute workload, indicating that the NVIDIA architecture, despite having fewer shading units (384 vs. 512) and a lower peak FP32 rating (863.2 GFLOPS vs. 947.2 GFLOPS), is more efficient at executing this specific type of parallel workload. The higher clock speeds of the NVIDIA part (1,029 MHz base and 1,124 MHz boost vs. 900 MHz base and 925 MHz boost for the AMD) likely contribute to this efficiency, allowing it to extract more performance per compute unit.

The data shows zero wins for the AMD FirePro W5130M in the head-to-head benchmarks, but this is a limitation of the test suite rather than a definitive statement on the GPU's capabilities. The AMD part's hardware specifications—a 128-bit GDDR5 memory interface producing 64.00 GB/s of bandwidth, and a 16-ROP setup capable of 14.80 GPixel/s fill rate—are unequivocally superior on paper. In a memory-bandwidth-bound benchmark, or a test measuring raw pixel throughput, the AMD FirePro W5130M would be expected to win based on these figures. However, the only available data point shows the NVIDIA GeForce 840M winning the compute test with a 17.5% delta, a significant margin that cannot be ignored.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs diverge sharply on memory and die specifications. The NVIDIA GeForce 840M uses 2 GB of DDR3 memory on a 64-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 16.02 GB/s. The AMD FirePro W5130M also has 2 GB of memory but uses GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus, quadrupling the bandwidth to 64.00 GB/s. Clock speeds favor NVIDIA: the 840M runs at 1,029 MHz base and 1,124 MHz boost, while the W5130M runs at 900 MHz base and 925 MHz boost. The memory clocks are similar in base frequency (1,001 MHz vs. 1,000 MHz), but the effective data rate differs due to memory type, with the GDDR5 on the AMD part achieving 4 Gbps effective versus 2 Gbps effective on the NVIDIA's DDR3.

Compute unit counts also differ significantly. The AMD FirePro W5130M has 512 shading units, 32 TMUs, and 16 ROPs, while the NVIDIA GeForce 840M has 384 shading units, 16 TMUs, and only 8 ROPs. This allows the AMD part to achieve a higher pixel rate (14.80 GPixel/s vs. 8.99 GPixel/s) and texture rate (29.60 GTexel/s vs. 17.98 GTexel/s), as well as a higher peak FP32 performance of 947.2 GFLOPS compared to 863.2 GFLOPS. The bus interface also differs, with the NVIDIA part using PCIe 3.0 x8 and the AMD using the wider PCIe 3.0 x16. The TDP for the NVIDIA part is listed as 33 W, while the AMD part's TDP is not provided. The NVIDIA die is smaller and less complex, measuring 77 mm² with 1,020 million transistors, while the AMD die is 123 mm² with 1,500 million transistors on the same 28 nm TSMC process node.

Architecture Differences

The NVIDIA GeForce 840M is built on the Maxwell architecture using the GM108S chip, a design focused on efficiency and gaming performance. It has a transistor density of 13.2 million transistors per mm². The AMD FirePro W5130M uses the older GCN 1.0 architecture with the Tropo chip, which is a professional mobile workstation part from the FirePro Mobile (Wx100M) generation. Despite being on the same 28 nm process from TSMC, the AMD chip is larger and has a lower transistor density of 12.2 million transistors per mm².

Architecturally, the AMD GCN part is designed with a wider memory path and more parallel compute units, as evidenced by its 128-bit bus and 512 shaders. This makes it a more robust solution for bandwidth-intensive professional applications. The NVIDIA Maxwell part, by contrast, achieves its performance through higher clock speeds and a more efficient compute design, which is reflected in its OpenCL benchmark victory. The NVIDIA part also has a more recent Vulkan API implementation (1.4 vs. 1.2.170), suggesting better support for modern graphics drivers. Both GPUs are now End-of-life, with the NVIDIA part being the predecessor to the GeForce 900M series and the AMD part being the predecessor to the Radeon Pro Mobile series.

The Verdict

The data presents a clear choice based on workload priority. If the primary need is raw compute performance in OpenCL, the NVIDIA GeForce 840M is the definitive pick. Its 5,764 Geekbench OpenCL score is 17.5% higher than the AMD FirePro W5130M's, and it offers superior Vulkan API support (1.4 vs. 1.2.170). This makes it the better choice for general-purpose computing tasks and applications that leverage these APIs.

The AMD FirePro W5130M is the hardware specialist for memory-bound and fill-rate-limited tasks. Its 64.00 GB/s of memory bandwidth is four times that of the NVIDIA part, and its pixel rate (14.80 GPixel/s) and texture rate (29.60 GTexel/s) are significantly higher. While it loses the single compute benchmark, its specification sheet suggests it would be the stronger performer in tasks that saturate the memory bus or rely on rapid pixel/texture writes, which are common in certain professional graphics workloads.

In summary, the NVIDIA GeForce 840M wins the benchmark battle, but the AMD FirePro W5130M wins the specification war in several key areas. The choice depends entirely on whether the user's software is compute-bound (favoring NVIDIA) or memory/bandwidth-bound (favoring AMD). The average benchmark scores reinforce this split: the NVIDIA part sits at the 31st percentile with an average score of 5,322, while the AMD part sits at the 29th percentile with an average score of 4,904, a difference of only about 8.5% overall.