NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M vs NVIDIA Quadro K4000 Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M and the NVIDIA Quadro K4000 are two end-of-life NVIDIA parts separated by roughly a generation of architecture and an entirely different design intent: one is a 35 W mobile GeForce aimed at laptops, the other a single-slot workstation card with certified drivers and a four-digit launch MSRP. Despite that gulf, the recorded benchmark data shows them landing remarkably close in aggregate compute performance, which makes the head-to-head more interesting than the spec sheet suggests. Both sit in the middle of the database's historical range, with percentileVsAllGpus values of 37 for the GT 555M and 34 for the Quadro K4000, and their average benchmark scores differ by only a few hundred points. The details, however, tell very different stories depending on which workload you examine.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database contains one directly comparable test between these two GPUs: Geekbench OpenCL. There, the Quadro K4000 scores 6816 against the GT 555M's 6493, a delta of 4.7 percent in the K4000's favor. The head-to-head record is therefore a clean sweep for the workstation card, one win to zero.

A 4.7 percent gap is narrow, and the surrounding data reinforces how tight this matchup is in compute terms. The GT 555M's average benchmark score of 6493 places it within 0.2 percent of the Quadro M5000M (6481), within 0.3 percent of the Radeon Vega 10 Mobile (6476), and just 0.3 percent behind the GeForce GTX 670M (6513). The Intel UHD Graphics P750, at 6554, sits 0.9 percent ahead. In other words, on OpenCL throughput the aging mobile GeForce trades blows with parts spanning multiple later generations, including integrated graphics from a much newer era.

The Quadro K4000's average of 5982 is nominally lower, but that average is pulled down by its additional recorded results in Geekbench Metal (4166) and Geekbench Vulkan (6964), tests for which the GT 555M has no entries. On the OpenCL test where they genuinely overlap, the K4000's 6816 is its second-best recorded score and clearly ahead. The K4000's own rival cluster is equally tight: the Quadro K4000M (5986) and FirePro W4100 (5987) are both within 0.1 percent, the Radeon HD 8750M (5970) is 0.2 percent behind, and the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server (5996) is only 0.2 percent ahead on this metric, an artifact of averaging across mixed test suites rather than a true performance parity.

The picture that emerges is one of near-parity in GPU compute benchmarks, with the K4000 holding a small but consistent edge in the only shared test. The theoretical hardware numbers, covered below, suggest the gap should be far larger, and the benchmark data shows it is not.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU wins the only shared benchmark?

A: The Quadro K4000. It scores 6816 in Geekbench OpenCL versus 6493 for the GT 555M, a 4.7 percent advantage.

Q: How do the two compare against the broader database?

A: Both are low-percentile historical parts. The GT 555M sits at the 37th percentile versus all GPUs, the K4000 at the 34th, so they occupy nearly the same overall position despite very different hardware.

Q: Which card has the stronger raw specifications?

A: The Quadro K4000 by a wide margin. It has 768 shading units to 144, 64 TMUs to 24, 24 ROPs to 16, and 1,244.2 GFLOPS of FP32 throughput versus 339.8 GFLOPS.

Q: Which GPU has more memory bandwidth?

A: The K4000. Its GDDR5 subsystem delivers 134.8 GB/s across a 192-bit bus, compared to 28.80 GB/s of DDR3 bandwidth on a 128-bit bus for the GT 555M.

Q: How large is the power gap between them?

A: Significant. The GT 555M is rated at 35 W TDP, while the K4000 draws 80 W, requires a 6-pin power connector, and carries a suggested PSU rating of 250 W.

Q: What did the Quadro K4000 cost at launch?

A: Its launch MSRP was 1,269 USD. The GT 555M has no recorded launch MSRP in the database.

Where Each One Wins

The Quadro K4000 wins every category where the database has comparative data. It takes the single head-to-head benchmark, and it dominates the theoretical throughput charts: its pixel rate of 12.96 GPixel/s is well ahead of the GT 555M's 3.540 GPixel/s, and its texture rate of 51.84 GTexel/s dwarfs the 14.16 GTexel/s of the mobile part. Multiply those advantages across memory capacity (3 GB versus 1024 MB), memory bandwidth, and shader count, and the K4000 is the stronger card for any workload involving large datasets, multi-display professional output, or sustained compute.

The GT 555M's wins are contextual rather than benchmark-based. Its 35 W TDP makes it viable in notebooks where an 80 W single-slot card demanding a 6-pin connector simply cannot fit. Its average benchmark score is actually higher than the K4000's (6493 versus 5982), though this reflects different mixes of recorded tests rather than superior performance in a shared workload. Its OpenCL score also lands within a fraction of a percent of parts like the Quadro M5000M and Vega 10 Mobile, indicating that for light GPU compute on the go, it held its own. Neither part records Vulkan support on the GeForce side; the K4000 lists Vulkan 1.2.175, giving it broader modern API coverage in the database.

For workstation scenarios, the K4000's output configuration, one DVI and two DisplayPort 1.2 connectors, supports multi-monitor professional setups, whereas the GT 555M's display output is listed as portable-device-dependent, as expected for a mobile GPU integrated into varied laptop designs.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ on nearly every measurable axis. The GT 555M is a mobile GeForce 500M part on the GF106 chip; the K4000 is a Quadro Kepler (Kx000) workstation card on the GK106 chip. The GT 555M carries 1024 MB of DDR3 on a 128-bit bus at 900 MHz (1800 Mbps effective), yielding 28.80 GB/s. The K4000 carries 3 GB of GDDR5 on a 192-bit bus at 1404 MHz (5.6 Gbps effective), yielding 134.8 GB/s.

Shader resources diverge sharply: 144 shading units, 24 TMUs, and 16 ROPs for the GT 555M against 768, 64, and 24 for the K4000. Neither part has RT cores or tensor cores. FP32 compute is 339.8 GFLOPS versus 1,244.2 GFLOPS, and neither lists FP16.

Power and form factor also split cleanly. The GT 555M is a 35 W mobile part with no listed slot width, power connectors, or suggested PSU. The K4000 is an 80 W single-slot desktop card with one 6-pin connector and a 250 W suggested PSU. Its physical dimensions are recorded as 241 mm (9.5 inches) in length and 111 mm (4.4 inches) in height; the GT 555M has no listed dimensions.

Both share a PCIe 2.0 x16 bus interface and both are end-of-life. The GT 555M was released in July 2011, the K4000 in February 2013. Both list DirectX 12 (11_0) feature level and OpenGL 4.6; only the K4000 lists a Vulkan version. The K4000's launch MSRP of 1,269 USD is recorded; the GT 555M's is not.

Architecture Differences

The GT 555M uses NVIDIA's Fermi architecture on TSMC's 40 nm process, packing 1,170 million transistors into a 238 mm² die for a density of 4.9M transistors per mm². The K4000 uses the Kepler architecture on TSMC's 28 nm process, with 2,540 million transistors in a 221 mm² die at 11.5M per mm². The K4000 fits more than twice the transistor count into a slightly smaller die, a direct consequence of the node shrink, and Kepler's design philosophy of many smaller CUDA cores is visible in the 768 shading units spread across that silicon versus Fermi's fewer, larger units on the mobile chip.

Generationally, the GT 555M belongs to the GeForce 500M line, succeeding the GeForce 400M and preceding the GeForce 600M. The K4000 belongs to the Quadro Kx000 line, succeeding Quadro Fermi and preceding Quadro Maxwell. Both lineages converged on the same DirectX 12 (11_0) and OpenGL 4.6 API support in the database records, but the K4000 adds Vulkan 1.2.175, which the GT 555M's record omits. Neither architecture includes dedicated ray tracing or tensor hardware; those features postdate both designs.

The memory subsystems also reflect their eras and market segments. DDR3 on a 128-bit bus was a mainstream mobile configuration for the GT 555M's generation, while the K4000's GDDR5 on a 192-bit bus was tuned for workstation throughput, delivering nearly five times the bandwidth.

The Verdict

The data supports a clear split. If the requirement is desktop workstation capability, the Quadro K4000 is the only choice between the two: it wins the shared OpenCL benchmark by 4.7 percent, offers roughly 3.7 times the FP32 compute, nearly 4.7 times the memory bandwidth, three times the memory capacity, substantially higher pixel and texture rates, and professional display outputs. The launch MSRP of 1,269 USD positioned it firmly as a professional purchase.

If the requirement is a laptop, the comparison is largely academic, since the GT 555M's 35 W TDP and portable-device-dependent outputs define it as a mobile solution. What the benchmarks show is that in GPU compute terms this mobile GeForce was not far off a card with vastly larger hardware resources, landing within 5 percent of the K4000 in OpenCL and sitting at the 37th percentile versus the K4000's 34th. On the recorded numbers alone, the K4000 wins the head-to-head, but by a far smaller margin than its specifications imply, while the GT 555M remains the only one of the two that belongs in a notebook.