NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 vs NVIDIA Tesla M10 Comparison

# The Verdict

The NVIDIA Tesla M10 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 occupy opposite ends of the GPU spectrum, and the benchmark data makes that split explicit. The Tesla M10 is a compute-oriented accelerator with a modest average benchmark score of 9724, placing it at the 47th percentile among all GPUs in the database. The GeForce GTX 980, by contrast, posts a far higher average score of 8167, which places it at the 43rd percentile overall. That percentile gap is telling: the GTX 980 sits above more than half of the database entries, while the Tesla M10 sits just below the median.

For buyers who need raw compute throughput in a server chassis, the Tesla M10 is the clear choice. The M10's average score trails the nearest rival, the NVIDIA Tesla C2070, by only 0.1%, and it is effectively a statistical tie with that older accelerator. The data shows a 0.6% lead for the GeForce GTX 1070, which is a desktop gaming card, and a 0.7% margin for the AMD Radeon Pro WX 2100. The Tesla M10 is a dual-slot, passively cooled board with no display outputs, and it is designed to be installed in a server. Its 28 nm GM107 chip, 8 GB of GDDR5 memory, and 640 shading units deliver solid compute performance.

The GeForce GTX 980 is a different animal entirely. It wins two out of two head-to-head benchmark comparisons in the database, with decisive margins: 70.2% ahead of the Tesla M10 in the Geekbench OpenCL test, and 59.5% ahead in the Vulkan test. The GTX 980 is a Maxwell 2 part with 2048 shading units, 128 texture units, and 64 ROPs. It is a dual-slot card with 4 GB of GDDR5 memory and a 256-bit memory bus. The 980 is the one to get when the task is rendering frames to a display, and the Tesla M10 is the one to get when the task is sustained compute in a datacenter.

Where Each One Wins

The benchmark data splits the two cards cleanly.

Tesla M10 wins in: Any workload where the GPU is installed in a server, and the job is to accelerate a compute workload rather than render an image. The Tesla M10 has no display outputs, which is the correct feature set for a headless accelerator. Its 1,872 million transistors and 148 mm² die are dense, and its 640 shading units, while fewer than the GTX 980's 2048, are backed by 16 ROPs and 40 texture units. The Tesla M10's 8 GB frame buffer is double that of the GTX 980, and its 128-bit memory bus with 83.20 GB/s of bandwidth is sufficient for compute arrays. It uses a dual-slot cooler and a single 8-pin connector, and its 225 W board power aligns with a server power supply. The Tesla M10's 47th percentile rank means it is not a top-of-the-line part, but it is a very capable workhorse for the price.

GeForce GTX 980 wins in every frame-bound task. The 2,048 shading units and 1753 MHz memory clock are exactly what a rasterizer wants. In the database's head-to-head benchmarks, the GTX 980 wins both tests: OpenCL and Vulkan. The 980's 4.981 TFLOPS FP32 rate, 77.82 GPixel/s pixel rate, and 155.6 GTexel/s texture rate are the highest numbers in this comparison. The GTX 980 has a 256-bit memory bus, 224.4 GB/s of bandwidth, and a 450 W PSU suggestion. It is also a dual-slot card with two 6-pin power connectors, and it provides 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0, and 3x DisplayPort 1.2. The GTX 980's 43rd percentile rank means it is not an ultra-high-end card, but it is a very well-rounded one.

Architecture Differences

The two chips come from the same process generation, TSMC's 28 nm node, but they are different sizes of the same architecture family.

The Tesla M10 uses the GM107 chip, the smallest Maxwell chip, with 1,870 million transistors on a 148 mm² die, which is 12.6 million transistors per mm². It has 640 shading units, 40 texture units, and 16 ROPs. The card is a Tesla Maxwell generation part, and it succeeds the Tesla Kepler in the product stack.

The GeForce GTX 980 uses the GM204 chip, a larger Maxwell 2 die. It is a 398 mm² piece of silicon with 5,200 million transistors, a density of 13.1 million per mm². The GTX 980 has 2,048 shading units, 128 texture units, and 64 ROPs. It belongs to the GeForce 900 generation, which follows the GeForce 700 series in the product stack.

The difference in the number of shading units (640 vs. 2,048) explains a substantial part of the performance difference. The GTX 980 has exactly three times as many shading units, 2.25 times as many texture units, and 4x as many ROPs. The Tesla M10's memory is 8 GB GDDR5 vs. the GTX 980's 4 GB GDDR5. The Tesla's bus is half the GTX 980's width, 128-bit vs. 256-bit, which is why the GTX 980's bandwidth (224.4 GB/s) is 2.7x that of the Tesla.

The GTX 980 also features a much more generous display output suite. The Tesla M10 has none, as it is a compute card. The GTX 980 has a trio of DisplayPort 1.2 outputs, a single HDMI 2.0, and a DVI. The Tesla's API support is a bit older in one respect: it lists DirectX 12 (11_0) and OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4. The GTX 980 lists DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The memory clock is the largest spread: 1300 MHz on the Tesla vs. 1753 MHz on the GTX 980. The boost clock is 1306 MHz on the Tesla vs. 1216 MHz on the GTX 980, so the Tesla has a higher peak GPU clock, but the GeForce makes up for it with more shaders and a wider memory bus.

FAQ

Q: Which card is better for a workstation that also outputs to a monitor?

A: The GeForce GTX 980 is the only one of these two with display outputs. The Tesla M10 has no display output and is not suitable for driving a display. So if the machine needs to output video, the GTX 980 is the only one of the two that can do that job.

Q: Is the Tesla M10 faster than the GTX 980?

A: In the database's own benchmark tests, no. The GTX 980 beat the Tesla M10 in both head-to-head tests: 70.2% in Geekbench OpenCL and 59.5% in Geekbench Vulkan. The Tesla M10's only performance advantage is its higher boost clock: 1306 MHz vs. 1216 MHz. But the GTX 980 has more shading units, more texture units, more ROPs, and a wider memory bus, which outweigh the clock advantage.

Q: Does the Tesla M10 require more power than the GTX 980?

A: Yes. The database records a 225 W TDP for the Tesla M10 and a 165 W TDP for the GTX 980. The Tesla also requires a single 8-pin power connector, while the GTX 980 requires two 6-pin connectors. A 550 W PSU is suggested for the Tesla, a 450 W unit for the GTX 980.

Q: Can the GTX 980 drive multiple monitors?

A: Yes. The GTX 980 has one DVI, one HDMI 2.0, and three DisplayPort 1.2 outputs. The Tesla M10 has no display outputs whatsoever.

Q: Which card has more memory?

A: The Tesla M10 has 8 GB GDDR5. The GTX 980 has 4 GB. The Tesla also has a wider memory bus (128-bit vs. 256-bit) in the other direction: the GTX's bus is 256-bit, the Tesla's is 128-bit.

Q: Are these cards from the same generation?

A: No. The Tesla M10 is a Maxwell-generation part (the Tesla Maxwell series), with the GM107 chip. The GTX 980 is Maxwell 2.0 (GeForce 900 series), with the GM204 chip. They share a 28 nm process node and TSMC as foundry, but they are different generations within the same architectural family.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The numbers are from the database's own head-to-head tests. In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the GTX 980 scored 34,676, the Tesla M10 scored 10,318. That is a 70.2% advantage for the GeForce. In the Vulkan test, the GTX 980 scored 22,543 and the Tesla M10 scored 9,130, a 59.5% advantage for the GTX 980.

Those two results are in line with the specifications difference. The GTX 980 has 2,048 shading units, 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. The Tesla M10 has 640, 40, and 16, respectively. The GTX 980's 256-bit memory bus and 224.4 GB/s of bandwidth dwarf the Tesla's 128-bit bus and 83.20 GB/s. The GTX 980's 4.981 TFLOPS FP32, 77.82 GPixel/s pixel rate, and 155.6 GTexel/s texture rate are all higher than the Tesla's 1.672 TFLOPS, 20.90 GPixel/s, and 52.24 GTexel/s.

In the overall percentile ranking, the GTX 980 lands at the 43rd percentile of all GPUs, the Tesla M10 at the 47th percentile. They are not far apart in the general ranking, but in the tasks the GTX 980 is the clear winner. The Tesla is a server part with a different purpose: it is for compute, not for frame output. The database's data supports that: the Tesla's only wins are 0, the GTX 980's 2.