NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Mobile vs NVIDIA P106-100 Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Mobile and the NVIDIA P106-100 occupy opposite ends of the GPU spectrum, despite both carrying NVIDIA branding. The RTX 3080 Mobile is a modern Ampere-based laptop part designed for high-end gaming and creative workloads, while the P106-100 is a Pascal-era mining card with no display outputs. Benchmark data shows a decisive performance gap, but the P106-100 still holds a place in the database due to its unique positioning. This analysis compares their benchmark scores, specifications, and architectures, using only the provided data.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX 3080 Mobile wins in every benchmark category where both cards have recorded scores. Across the three shared tests—3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, Geekbench OpenCL, and Geekbench Vulkan—the RTX 3080 Mobile delivers significantly higher performance. In 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, it scores 2644 versus the P106-100’s 899, a 194.1% advantage. Geekbench OpenCL shows 104831 points against 35951, a 191.6% lead. Geekbench Vulkan is the largest gap: 104066 versus 32897, a 216.3% difference. The RTX 3080 Mobile also has a broader benchmark footprint, with additional scores across Passmark tests (DirectX 10, 11, 12, 9, G2D, G3D, and compute), while the P106-100 only has the three shared tests recorded.

The P106-100 does not win any head-to-head comparisons. Its only competitive strength appears in the aggregate average benchmark score, where it reaches 23249, nearly matching the RTX 3080 Mobile’s 23628. This is misleading, however, because the P106-100’s average is derived from only three benchmark runs, while the RTX 3080 Mobile’s average includes ten tests, many of which are older API benchmarks that score lower. In terms of raw compute capability, the RTX 3080 Mobile is the clear choice for any workload that leverages modern APIs, ray tracing, or tensor operations. The P106-100, with no display outputs, is limited to compute-only or mining scenarios, where its lower absolute performance but potentially different power characteristics might be relevant—though no power efficiency data is provided.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has a higher FP32 compute throughput?

A: The RTX 3080 Mobile delivers 18.98 TFLOPS FP32, while the P106-100 provides 4.375 TFLOPS. The RTX 3080 Mobile is roughly four times faster in this metric.

Q: Can the P106-100 be used for gaming on a monitor?

A: No. The P106-100 has no display outputs, as listed in its specifications. It is designed for compute or mining tasks, not for driving a display.

Q: How do the two cards compare in memory bandwidth?

A: The RTX 3080 Mobile has 448.0 GB/s bandwidth from 8 GB GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus. The P106-100 has 192.2 GB/s from 6 GB GDDR5 on a 192-bit bus.

Q: What is the difference in their 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 scores?

A: The RTX 3080 Mobile scores 2644, and the P106-100 scores 899. The RTX 3080 Mobile leads by 194.1%.

Q: Which card has a higher boost clock?

A: The P106-100 has a boost clock of 1709 MHz, which is higher than the RTX 3080 Mobile’s boost of 1545 MHz. However, the RTX 3080 Mobile’s architecture and core count compensate for the lower clock.

Q: Do both cards support DirectX 12 Ultimate?

A: No. The RTX 3080 Mobile supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the P106-100 only supports DirectX 12 (12_1).

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The three shared benchmark results paint a consistent picture of overwhelming RTX 3080 Mobile superiority. In 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, a modern DirectX 12 workload, the RTX 3080 Mobile scores 2644 against the P106-100’s 899. This 194.1% lead reflects not only the architecture gap but also the RTX 3080 Mobile’s support for hardware ray tracing and mesh shaders, which are absent on the P106-100.

Geekbench OpenCL results show the RTX 3080 Mobile at 104831 points, with the P106-100 at 35951—a 191.6% advantage. OpenCL is a compute-oriented benchmark, and the RTX 3080 Mobile’s 6144 shading units, 192 tensor cores, and 48 RT cores provide substantial parallel processing capability. The P106-100’s 1280 shading units and no tensor or RT cores limit its compute throughput, despite a higher boost clock (1709 MHz versus 1545 MHz).

Geekbench Vulkan shows the largest margin: 104066 for the RTX 3080 Mobile versus 32897 for the P106-100, a 216.3% difference. Vulkan is a low-level API that benefits from modern hardware features, and the RTX 3080 Mobile’s Ampere architecture with dedicated ray tracing and tensor hardware excels here. The P106-100, based on Pascal, lacks these specialised units and also has a narrower memory bus (192-bit versus 256-bit), which reduces bandwidth in memory-intensive Vulkan workloads.

Beyond these three, the RTX 3080 Mobile has additional Passmark scores: DirectX 10 (120), DirectX 11 (146), DirectX 12 (72), DirectX 9 (170), G2D (637), G3D (16321), and GPU compute (7276). The P106-100 has no recorded scores for these tests, so no direct comparison is possible. However, the RTX 3080 Mobile’s average benchmark score of 23628 across ten tests, compared to the P106-100’s 23249 across three, suggests the P106-100’s average is inflated by the absence of lower-scoring legacy API tests.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ across nearly every specification field. Memory configuration is a clear split: the RTX 3080 Mobile uses 8 GB of GDDR6 with a 256-bit bus, yielding 448.0 GB/s bandwidth, while the P106-100 uses 6 GB of GDDR5 with a 192-bit bus, yielding 192.2 GB/s. The RTX 3080 Mobile’s memory clock is 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective), whereas the P106-100 runs at 2002 MHz (8 Gbps effective). Despite the higher raw clock on the P106-100, the RTX 3080 Mobile’s wider bus and newer memory type provide more than double the bandwidth.

Compute resources are similarly divergent. The RTX 3080 Mobile has 6144 shading units, 192 TMUs, and 96 ROPs, while the P106-100 has 1280 shading units, 80 TMUs, and 48 ROPs. The RTX 3080 Mobile also includes 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores; the P106-100 has neither. Pixel rate on the RTX 3080 Mobile is 148.3 GPixel/s versus 82.03 GPixel/s on the P106-100, and texture rates are 296.6 GTexel/s versus 136.7 GTexel/s.

Clocks differ in a counterintuitive way: the P106-100 has a base clock of 1506 MHz and boost of 1709 MHz, both higher than the RTX 3080 Mobile’s 1110 MHz base and 1545 MHz boost. However, the RTX 3080 Mobile’s massive core count and newer architecture more than offset the lower clocks. Power consumption is close: 115 W TDP for the RTX 3080 Mobile versus 120 W for the P106-100, though the P106-100 requires a 6-pin power connector and a 300 W suggested PSU, while the RTX 3080 Mobile has no power connectors listed. The P106-100 is a dual-slot card measuring 250 mm (9.8 inches) in length, while the RTX 3080 Mobile has no physical dimensions listed. Bus interface differs: PCIe 4.0 x16 on the RTX 3080 Mobile versus PCIe 1.0 x16 on the P106-100.

Architecture Differences

The RTX 3080 Mobile is built on NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture using the GA104 chip, fabricated on Samsung’s 8 nm process. It contains 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 44.4M per mm². The P106-100 uses the older Pascal architecture with the GP106 chip, manufactured on TSMC’s 16 nm process. It houses 4,400 million transistors on a 200 mm² die, yielding a density of 22.0M per mm². The process node difference is significant: 8 nm versus 16 nm, which allows the RTX 3080 Mobile to pack more than four times the transistors into roughly double the die area.

The RTX 3080 Mobile supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The P106-100 also supports OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4, but only DirectX 12 (12_1), lacking the Ultimate feature set. The RTX 3080 Mobile’s FP16 performance is 18.98 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio with FP32), while the P106-100’s FP16 is a paltry 68.36 GFLOPS (1:64 ratio), highlighting the Ampere generation’s focus on mixed-precision compute. The P106-100’s lack of RT cores and tensor cores means it cannot accelerate ray tracing or AI workloads that the RTX 3080 Mobile handles natively.

The P106-100 is categorised under “Mining GPUs” with no display outputs, while the RTX 3080 Mobile is a standard mobile part with “Portable Device Dependent” display outputs. The RTX 3080 Mobile was released on 2021-01-11, while the P106-100 came out on 2017-06-18. Both are end-of-life products. In the nearestRivals data, the RTX 3080 Mobile sits close to the GeForce GTX TITAN Z (0.5% slower), RTX 3070 Ti Mobile (0.5% faster), and Radeon RX 9070 (1% slower). The P106-100 is nearly identical to the Radeon Pro Vega 16 (0% difference) and within 0.3% of the Radeon RX 6600M. These rival comparisons reinforce that the RTX 3080 Mobile competes in a much higher performance tier, despite the P106-100’s surprisingly similar average benchmark score due to its limited test set.