NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile vs NVIDIA Tesla P4 Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The recorded data contains two direct comparison points between the NVIDIA Tesla P4 and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile, and the outcome is decisive in one direction. Across both geekbench tests, the RTX 3050 Mobile wins outright, giving it a 2-0 record in the head-to-head matrix. The Tesla P4 does not claim a single victory in any recorded test. This is a clear sweep, though the magnitude of the losses varies significantly depending on the API tested.

In the geekbench_opencl test, the RTX 3050 Mobile posts a score of 50038, while the Tesla P4 manages 34947. That is a delta of -30.2% from the perspective of the Tesla P4, meaning the mobile Ampere part is roughly 30% faster in raw OpenCL throughput. The OpenCL gap is substantial, but it is not the whole story. The geekbench_vulkan test shows a smaller, yet still meaningful, advantage. Here the RTX 3050 Mobile scores 49051 versus the Tesla P4's 40309, a delta of -17.8%. The Vulkan result narrows the gap considerably compared to OpenCL, suggesting that the Tesla P4's Pascal architecture is relatively more efficient under Vulkan's lower-level abstraction, or that driver optimization on the older architecture holds up better in that API. Still, the RTX 3050 Mobile leads in both scenarios.

What does this mean in context? The Tesla P4's average benchmark score across all recorded tests is 37628, which places it in the 81st percentile of all GPUs in the database. The RTX 3050 Mobile, despite winning the head-to-head, has a lower average benchmark score of 33170 and sits in the 78th percentile. This is an interesting inversion: the newer mobile chip wins the direct comparisons, yet its overall average is dragged down, likely because the database includes a broader set of tests (such as 3dmark_3dmark_steel_nomad_dx12, where it scores a modest 421) that are not present for the Tesla P4. The Tesla P4's nearest rivals in the database include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 (average 37648, delta -0.1%) and the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (average 37507, delta 0.3%). The RTX 3050 Mobile, meanwhile, sits close to the NVIDIA T550 Mobile (average 33161, delta 0%) and the AMD Radeon Pro 570 (average 33207, delta -0.1%). The data suggests that while the RTX 3050 Mobile wins the two-test head-to-head, it occupies a lower tier in the overall performance distribution.

Architecture Differences

The architectural divide between these two is stark, and it explains much of the benchmark behavior. The Tesla P4 is built on the GP104 chip using the Pascal architecture, fabricated on a 16 nm process at TSMC. The RTX 3050 Mobile uses the GA107 chip with the Ampere architecture, produced on an 8 nm process at Samsung. The process node difference is significant: 16 nm versus 8 nm. This is a generational leap in manufacturing, and it shows up in transistor density. The Tesla P4 packs 7,200 million transistors into a 314 mm² die, yielding a density of 22.9M transistors per mm². The RTX 3050 Mobile, with 8,700 million transistors on a 200 mm² die, achieves a density of 43.5M per mm². That is nearly double the density, a direct consequence of the smaller process node.

The core configurations diverge as well. The Tesla P4 has 2560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 64 raster output units. The RTX 3050 Mobile has fewer shading units (2048), fewer TMUs (64), and fewer ROPs (32). Fewer cores, however, does not translate into slower performance in the recorded tests, which points to the architectural efficiency gains in Ampere. The RTX 3050 Mobile also introduces dedicated hardware that the Pascal-based Tesla P4 lacks entirely: 16 ray tracing cores and 64 tensor cores. The Tesla P4 lists no RT or tensor core counts, and its feature set is limited to the older DirectX 12 (12_1) API. The RTX 3050 Mobile supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), which includes features like hardware ray tracing and variable rate shading. Both support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4, so the API floor is the same, but the ceiling is higher for the Ampere part.

Memory architecture is another major differentiator. The Tesla P4 uses 8 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus, delivering a bandwidth of 192.3 GB/s. The RTX 3050 Mobile has only 4 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus, but with a higher effective memory clock of 12 Gbps versus 6 Gbps. The result is a nearly identical bandwidth: 192.0 GB/s for the RTX 3050 Mobile versus 192.3 GB/s for the Tesla P4. This is a crucial point: the memory bandwidth is essentially a tie, which means the performance differences in benchmarks are not primarily due to memory throughput. Instead, they stem from compute efficiency and clock speeds. The RTX 3050 Mobile runs at a base clock of 1065 MHz and a boost of 1343 MHz, higher than the Tesla P4's 886 MHz base and 1114 MHz boost. The FP32 throughput is close (5.501 TFLOPS for the RTX 3050 Mobile versus 5.704 TFLOPS for the Tesla P4), but the FP16 performance is wildly different: the RTX 3050 Mobile achieves 5.501 TFLOPS at a 1:1 ratio, while the Tesla P4 manages only 89.12 GFLOPS at a 1:64 ratio. That is a 1:64 ratio, meaning the Pascal card is heavily nerfed for half-precision work.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU wins the head-to-head benchmarks?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile wins both recorded tests. It scores 50038 versus 34947 in geekbench_opencl and 49051 versus 40309 in geekbench_vulkan.

Q: Why does the Tesla P4 have a higher average benchmark score despite losing the head-to-head?

A: The Tesla P4 has an average benchmark score of 37628, while the RTX 3050 Mobile averages 33170. The RTX 3050 Mobile's average is pulled down by an additional recorded test (3dmark_3dmark_steel_nomad_dx12) that scores only 421, which is not present in the Tesla P4's benchmark set.

Q: How do memory bandwidths compare between the two cards?

A: They are effectively identical. The Tesla P4 has 192.3 GB/s of bandwidth from 8 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus, while the RTX 3050 Mobile has 192.0 GB/s from 4 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus.

Q: Does the RTX 3050 Mobile support ray tracing?

A: Yes, it has 16 dedicated ray tracing cores and supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2). The Tesla P4 has no ray tracing cores and only supports DirectX 12 (12_1).

Q: What is the transistor density difference?

A: The RTX 3050 Mobile, built on an 8 nm Samsung process, achieves 43.5M transistors per mm². The Tesla P4, on a 16 nm TSMC process, achieves 22.9M per mm².

Q: Which card has a higher FP16 throughput?

A: The RTX 3050 Mobile by a wide margin. It delivers 5.501 TFLOPS FP16 at a 1:1 ratio, while the Tesla P4 delivers only 89.12 GFLOPS at a 1:64 ratio.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ across nearly every major specification category. The Tesla P4 uses the GP104 chip with Pascal architecture, while the RTX 3050 Mobile uses GA107 with Ampere. The process node shifts from 16 nm (TSMC) to 8 nm (Samsung). Transistor counts go from 7,200 million to 8,700 million, and die size shrinks from 314 mm² to 200 mm². Transistor density nearly doubles from 22.9M per mm² to 43.5M per mm².

Clock speeds are higher on the RTX 3050 Mobile: base 1065 MHz versus 886 MHz, boost 1343 MHz versus 1114 MHz. Memory type changes from GDDR5 to GDDR6, with effective speed rising from 6 Gbps to 12 Gbps. Memory capacity drops from 8 GB to 4 GB, and bus width halves from 256-bit to 128-bit. Bandwidth stays roughly the same (192.3 GB/s versus 192.0 GB/s). Shading units drop from 2560 to 2048, TMUs from 160 to 64, and ROPs from 64 to 32. The RTX 3050 Mobile adds 16 RT cores and 64 tensor cores, which the Tesla P4 lacks.

Pixel rate falls from 71.30 GPixel/s to 42.98 GPixel/s, and texture rate falls from 178.2 GTexel/s to 85.95 GTexel/s. FP32 is close (5.704 TFLOPS versus 5.501 TFLOPS), but FP16 is drastically different (89.12 GFLOPS versus 5.501 TFLOPS). The Tesla P4 has a TDP of 75 W and is single-slot with no power connectors and no display outputs. The RTX 3050 Mobile has a TDP of 45 W, is an IGP (integrated graphics processor) with no power connectors, and its display outputs are portable device dependent. The bus interface differs: PCIe 3.0 x16 for the Tesla P4 versus PCIe 4.0 x8 for the RTX 3050 Mobile. Release dates are 2016-09-12 for the Tesla P4 and 2021-05-10 for the RTX 3050 Mobile. Both are end-of-life.

Where Each One Wins

Based strictly on the recorded data, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile is the outright winner in both benchmark tests. It wins geekbench_opencl by 30.2% and geekbench_vulkan by 17.8%. If the use case is any workload that relies on OpenCL or Vulkan compute, the RTX 3050 Mobile is the better performer. This includes general GPU compute tasks, some machine learning inference, and graphics workloads that leverage these APIs. The RTX 3050 Mobile also has the advantage of dedicated ray tracing cores and tensor cores, making it suitable for applications that use DirectX 12 Ultimate features, such as hardware-accelerated ray tracing in modern games or DLSS (which relies on tensor cores). Its higher FP16 throughput (5.501 TFLOPS versus 89.12 GFLOPS) makes it dramatically better for half-precision workloads, which are common in AI inference and some scientific computing.

The Tesla P4, despite losing both head-to-head tests, still has a higher average benchmark score (37628 versus 33170) and a higher percentile rank (81st versus 78th). This suggests that in the broader database, the Tesla P4 competes at a higher level. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 (delta -0.1%) and the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (delta 0.3%), which are desktop-class GPUs. The Tesla P4 also has double the memory capacity (8 GB versus 4 GB), which matters for workloads that exceed 4 GB of VRAM, such as large model inference or rendering high-resolution textures. Its 256-bit memory bus and identical bandwidth (192.3 GB/s) mean it is not memory-starved relative to the RTX 3050 Mobile. The Tesla P4 wins on memory capacity, transistor count, die size, shading units, TMUs, ROPs, pixel rate, texture rate, FP32 throughput, and TDP headroom (75 W versus 45 W, though both are low-power parts). It also supports PCIe 3.0 x16, which, while older, offers more lanes than the RTX 3050 Mobile's PCIe 4.0 x8 (though PCIe 4.0 has double the per-lane bandwidth).

The Verdict

The data presents a clear but nuanced picture. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile is the faster GPU in the two direct comparisons recorded, winning both geekbench_opencl and geekbench_vulkan by margins of 30.2% and 17.8% respectively. For anyone choosing between these two based purely on raw compute performance in those APIs, the RTX 3050 Mobile is the correct pick. It also brings modern features that the Tesla P4 cannot match: ray tracing cores, tensor cores, DirectX 12 Ultimate support, and drastically better FP16 throughput. Its lower TDP (45 W versus 75 W) makes it more power-efficient in absolute terms, and its 8 nm process node is a full generation ahead.

However, the Tesla P4 is not without its own strengths, and the data does not relegate it to irrelevance. Its average benchmark score of 37628 is higher than the RTX 3050 Mobile's 33170, and it sits in the 81st percentile of all GPUs versus the RTX 3050 Mobile's 78th. This indicates that in the broader database, the Tesla P4 is a more consistent performer across a wider range of tests. Its 8 GB of memory is double the RTX 3050 Mobile's 4 GB, which is a critical advantage for memory-bound workloads. Its FP32 throughput (5.704 TFLOPS) is slightly higher than the RTX 3050 Mobile (5.501 TFLOPS), and its texture rate (178.2 GTexel/s) is more than double (85.95 GTexel/s). The Tesla P4 also has a wider memory bus (256-bit versus 128-bit), which can be advantageous in certain access patterns.

The verdict depends on the workload. For modern gaming, ray tracing, or any task that leverages half-precision compute or tensor cores, the RTX 3050 Mobile is the clear winner. For workloads that need more than 4 GB of VRAM, or that rely on full FP32 precision and higher texture throughput, the Tesla P4 holds an edge. The RTX 3050 Mobile wins the head-to-head, but the Tesla P4 wins the overall database average. The choice is not about which is "better" in absolute terms; it is about which is better for the specific task. The data shows a 2-0 sweep for the RTX 3050 Mobile, but it also shows that the Tesla P4 sits in a higher percentile tier. Both are end-of-life products, so the decision comes down to the specific requirements of the application at hand, not future-proofing.