NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 vs NVIDIA Tesla M10 Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 and NVIDIA Tesla M10 are both end-of-life NVIDIA products, but they serve fundamentally different purposes. The GTX 1070 is a consumer gaming card from the GeForce 10-series, while the Tesla M10 is a Maxwell-based compute accelerator aimed at virtual desktop infrastructure. Despite their divergent roles, benchmark data places them in a similar performance envelope, with the GTX 1070 holding a clear edge in the limited tests where both appear.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head comparison is stark, though it is based on only two shared benchmark tests. In Geekbench OpenCL, the GTX 1070 scores 44,700 against the Tesla M10's 10,318. That translates to a 333.2% advantage for the GeForce card, meaning it delivers more than four times the compute performance in this API. The margin is enormous and reflects the fundamental architectural and specification gap between the two.

The second shared test, Geekbench Vulkan, shows a similar but slightly narrower gap. The GTX 1070 posts 22,121 points, while the Tesla M10 manages 9,130. This gives the GeForce card a 142.3% lead. While the percentage is smaller than in OpenCL, the absolute difference of nearly 13,000 points is still substantial. These two results account for all head-to-head wins, with the GTX 1070 taking both.

The Tesla M10 has no wins in any shared benchmark. Its only other benchmark result is a Geekbench OpenCL score of 10,318, which is already accounted for in the comparison. The data shows a one-sided contest in the compute workloads tested, with the GTX 1070 dominating by factors of 2.4x to 4.3x depending on the API.

When placed in the broader context of their nearest rivals, the two cards sit surprisingly close. The GTX 1070 has an average benchmark score of 9,780, while the Tesla M10 averages 9,724. The delta between them is just 0.6% in favor of the GTX 1070. This near-parity in average score is driven by the GTX 1070's wider range of benchmark results, including lower scores in older DirectX tests that pull its average down. The Tesla M10, with only two benchmarks, benefits from a narrower dataset.

Where Each One Wins

The GTX 1070 wins decisively in raw compute throughput and graphics workloads. Its Geekbench OpenCL score of 44,700 is not just higher than the Tesla M10; it is in a different performance class. This makes it the clear choice for any application leveraging OpenCL for general-purpose GPU compute, from physics simulations to media processing. The Vulkan result of 22,121 further cements its advantage in modern graphics APIs, which are increasingly used for both gaming and compute tasks.

The GTX 1070 also has a broader benchmark portfolio, with scores across 3DMark Steel Nomad, Geekbench Metal, PassMark DirectX 9/10/11/12, PassMark G2D, G3D, and GPU Compute. Its PassMark G3D score of 13,498 and GPU Compute score of 6,102 indicate strong performance in both rasterization and compute-heavy workloads. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1,082 shows it can handle modern DirectX 12 titles, albeit at a modest level given its 47th percentile ranking among all GPUs.

The Tesla M10, by contrast, has no wins in any category. Its only two benchmark results — Geekbench OpenCL at 10,318 and Geekbench Vulkan at 9,130 — place it well behind the GTX 1070. However, the Tesla M10's role is not captured by these consumer-oriented tests. Its specification sheet reveals a card designed for virtual desktop infrastructure, with no display outputs and a 225 W TDP. The absence of gaming benchmarks like PassMark DirectX or 3DMark suggests its intended workloads are not represented in this dataset.

For users prioritizing compute density per watt, the GTX 1070's 6.463 TFLOPS FP32 performance at 150 W TDP is efficient. The Tesla M10's 1.672 TFLOPS FP32 at 225 W TDP is both slower and more power-hungry. The GTX 1070 also wins on memory bandwidth, delivering 256.3 GB/s versus the Tesla M10's 83.20 GB/s, which is critical for memory-bound compute tasks.

Architecture Differences

The two cards are built on different architectures from different generations. The GTX 1070 uses the Pascal architecture on a 16 nm TSMC process, while the Tesla M10 uses the older Maxwell architecture on a 28 nm TSMC process. This node difference is significant, as the 16 nm process allows for higher transistor density and improved power efficiency.

The GTX 1070's chip, GP104, contains 7,200 million transistors on a 314 mm² die, yielding a density of 22.9M transistors per mm². The Tesla M10's GM107 chip is much smaller, with 1,870 million transistors on a 148 mm² die, giving a density of 12.6M transistors per mm². This means the GTX 1070 packs nearly four times the transistors into just over twice the die area, enabling its much higher shading unit count.

The GPU core configurations differ substantially. The GTX 1070 has 1,920 shading units, 120 texture mapping units (TMUs), and 64 render output units (ROPs). The Tesla M10 has only 640 shading units, 40 TMUs, and 16 ROPs. This is a 3x advantage in shading units, 3x in TMUs, and 4x in ROPs for the GeForce card. These differences directly explain the performance gap: more shading units handle more parallel compute, more TMUs accelerate texture filtering, and more ROPs improve pixel fill rate.

The clock speeds also favor the GTX 1070. Its base clock of 1506 MHz and boost clock of 1683 MHz are significantly higher than the Tesla M10's 1033 MHz base and 1306 MHz boost. Higher clocks, combined with more execution units, produce a multiplicative performance advantage. The GTX 1070's pixel rate of 107.7 GPixel/s and texture rate of 202.0 GTexel/s dwarf the Tesla M10's 20.90 GPixel/s and 52.24 GTexel/s.

Both cards lack ray tracing and tensor cores, so neither is suited for ray-traced workloads or AI acceleration in the current sense. The GTX 1070 supports DirectX 12 (12_1) and Vulkan 1.4, while the Tesla M10 only supports DirectX 12 (11_0) and Vulkan 1.4. The higher DirectX feature level on the GTX 1070 means better support for modern rendering techniques.

Specification Differences

The memory configurations differ, though both cards have 8 GB of GDDR5. The GTX 1070 uses a 256-bit memory bus, while the Tesla M10 uses a 128-bit bus. This directly affects bandwidth: the GTX 1070 delivers 256.3 GB/s, while the Tesla M10 manages only 83.20 GB/s. The effective memory clock also differs, with the GTX 1070 running at 2002 MHz (8 Gbps effective) versus the Tesla M10's 1300 MHz (5.2 Gbps effective).

Power requirements show an interesting inversion. Despite being far more powerful, the GTX 1070 has a lower TDP of 150 W, while the Tesla M10 consumes 225 W. Both use a single 8-pin power connector, but the suggested PSU differs: 450 W for the GTX 1070 versus 550 W for the Tesla M10. The Tesla M10 is less power-efficient by a wide margin, delivering only 1.672 TFLOPS FP32 while drawing 50% more power than the GTX 1070's 6.463 TFLOPS.

Display outputs are another major differentiator. The GTX 1070 includes 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0, and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, making it suitable for multi-monitor setups. The Tesla M10 has no display outputs at all, confirming its role as a headless compute accelerator for virtual desktop infrastructure. Both cards are dual-slot and 267 mm long, but the GTX 1070 also lists height and width dimensions of 112 mm and 40 mm, while the Tesla M10's height and width are not specified.

The GTX 1070 was released on June 9, 2016, with the Tesla M10 following a few weeks later on May 17, 2016. The GTX 1070's predecessor is the GeForce 900 series and its successor is the GeForce 20 series. The Tesla M10's predecessor is Tesla Kepler and its successor is Tesla Pascal. Both are end-of-life products, and neither has any FP16 performance listed for the Tesla M10, while the GTX 1070 offers 101.0 GFLOPS FP16 (1:64 ratio).

FAQ

Q: How much faster is the GTX 1070 than the Tesla M10 in OpenCL?

A: In Geekbench OpenCL, the GTX 1070 scores 44,700 versus the Tesla M10's 10,318, giving the GTX 1070 a 333.2% performance advantage.

Q: Do both cards have the same amount of memory?

A: Yes, both have 8 GB of GDDR5 memory. However, the GTX 1070 uses a 256-bit bus with 256.3 GB/s bandwidth, while the Tesla M10 uses a 128-bit bus with only 83.20 GB/s bandwidth.

Q: Which card has higher power consumption?

A: The Tesla M10 has a higher TDP of 225 W, compared to the GTX 1070's 150 W. The GTX 1070 also has a lower suggested PSU of 450 W versus 550 W for the Tesla M10.

Q: Can the Tesla M10 output video to a display?

A: No, the Tesla M10 has no display outputs at all. The GTX 1070, in contrast, includes 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0, and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a outputs.

Q: What is the architecture difference between the two cards?

A: The GTX 1070 uses the Pascal architecture on a 16 nm TSMC process, while the Tesla M10 uses Maxwell on a 28 nm TSMC process. The GTX 1070's chip (GP104) has 7,200 million transistors, while the Tesla M10's chip (GM107) has 1,870 million.

Q: Which card has more shading units?

A: The GTX 1070 has 1,920 shading units, exactly three times the 640 shading units found on the Tesla M10. The GTX 1070 also has 120 TMUs and 64 ROPs versus 40 TMUs and 16 ROPs on the Tesla M10.