NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 vs NVIDIA Tesla M4 Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 and NVIDIA Tesla M4 occupy vastly different corners of the GPU landscape. One is a modern consumer graphics card built for gaming and real-time rendering, while the other is a low-power compute accelerator from a previous era. The data shows they share only a manufacturer and an end-of-life production status; their benchmark scores, architectures, and capabilities diverge sharply.

FAQ

Q: How much faster is the RTX 4060 than the Tesla M4 in the only shared benchmark?

A: In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the RTX 4060 scores 95,057 points versus the Tesla M4's 16,932 points. That is a 461.4% advantage, making the RTX 4060 more than 5.6 times faster in this compute workload.

Q: Which card has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The RTX 4060 has an average benchmark score of 17,639, while the Tesla M4 averages 16,932. This places the RTX 4060 at the 61st percentile of all GPUs, one percentile higher than the Tesla M4's 60th percentile.

Q: What are the closest rivals for each card based on average score?

A: The RTX 4060's nearest rival is the AMD Radeon HD 7790, which is 0.2% behind it. For the Tesla M4, the closest competitor is the NVIDIA T400 4 GB, which is 0.8% behind it.

Q: Do both cards support the same level of DirectX?

A: No. The RTX 4060 supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the Tesla M4 only supports DirectX 12 (12_1). The RTX 4060 also has Vulkan 1.4 support, matching the Tesla M4's Vulkan 1.4.

Q: What is the difference in memory capacity and bandwidth?

A: The RTX 4060 has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory with 272.0 GB/s bandwidth on a 128-bit bus. The Tesla M4 has 4 GB of GDDR5 memory with 88.00 GB/s bandwidth, also on a 128-bit bus.

Q: Which card has more shading units?

A: The RTX 4060 has 3,072 shading units, while the Tesla M4 has 1,024. The RTX 4060 also has 96 texture mapping units and 48 ROPs, compared to 64 TMUs and 32 ROPs on the Tesla M4.

The Verdict

The data points to a straightforward conclusion: the RTX 4060 is the superior card for nearly any workload. Its single benchmark win is decisive, with a 461.4% lead in Geekbench OpenCL. The RTX 4060 also has a higher average benchmark score (17,639 vs 16,932) and a higher percentile ranking (61st vs 60th).

For anyone choosing between these two, the RTX 4060 is the clear pick for compute tasks, gaming, and any application that benefits from modern features like ray tracing. The Tesla M4's only advantages are its lower power draw (50 W vs 115 W), single-slot design, and lack of a power connector requirement. These make it a plausible choice only for extremely power-constrained, headless server environments where the RTX 4060's 115 W TDP and dual-slot footprint might be problematic. Even then, the performance gap is so large that the Tesla M4 only makes sense if raw compute throughput is irrelevant. The data suggests the RTX 4060 is the better investment for all but the most niche deployment scenarios.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head benchmark data contains only a single test: Geekbench OpenCL. In this test, the RTX 4060 scores 95,057, while the Tesla M4 scores 16,932. The delta is 461.4%, a massive margin that underscores the generational and architectural gulf between the two products.

This result is not close. The RTX 4060's score is nearly six times higher. For context, the RTX 4060's nearest rival, the AMD Radeon HD 7790, is only 0.2% away from its average score, meaning the RTX 4060 sits in a competitive field of modern cards. The Tesla M4, meanwhile, is 0.8% ahead of the NVIDIA T400 4 GB, a low-end professional card. The 461.4% delta in the head-to-head test dwarfs any difference seen within each card's respective rival group, highlighting that these two GPUs are not competing in the same league.

Specification Differences

The specification sheets for these two cards read like they come from different eras, which is fitting given their release dates. The RTX 4060 was released on 2023-05-17, while the Tesla M4 launched on 2015-11-09.

• Process Node: The RTX 4060 is built on a 5 nm process, while the Tesla M4 uses a 28 nm process.
• Transistors: The RTX 4060 has 18,900 million transistors on a 159 mm² die. The Tesla M4 has 2,940 million transistors on a 228 mm² die.
• Transistor Density: The RTX 4060 achieves 118.9M / mm², versus the Tesla M4's 12.9M / mm².
• Clock Speeds: The RTX 4060 has a base clock of 1830 MHz and a boost clock of 2460 MHz. The Tesla M4's base clock is 872 MHz with a boost of 1072 MHz.
• Memory: The RTX 4060 uses 8 GB GDDR6, while the Tesla M4 uses 4 GB GDDR5.
• Memory Clock: The RTX 4060 runs at 2125 MHz (17 Gbps effective), while the Tesla M4 runs at 1375 MHz (5.5 Gbps effective).
• Bandwidth: The RTX 4060 delivers 272.0 GB/s, while the Tesla M4 delivers 88.00 GB/s.
• Power: The RTX 4060 has a 115 W TDP and requires a 1x 12-pin power connector. The Tesla M4 has a 50 W TDP and no power connector.
• Physical Design: The RTX 4060 is dual-slot, while the Tesla M4 is single-slot.
• Bus Interface: The RTX 4060 uses PCIe 4.0 x8, while the Tesla M4 uses PCIe 3.0 x16.
• Display Outputs: The RTX 4060 has 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a. The Tesla M4 has no display outputs.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gap is as wide as the performance gap. The RTX 4060 is based on the Ada Lovelace architecture with the AD107 chip, while the Tesla M4 uses the Maxwell 2.0 architecture with the GM206 chip.

The RTX 4060 includes 24 ray tracing cores and 96 tensor cores, features completely absent from the Tesla M4, which has none. This means the RTX 4060 can handle hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI workloads, while the Tesla M4 cannot. The shading unit count also differs dramatically: 3,072 on the RTX 4060 versus 1,024 on the Tesla M4. The RTX 4060 also supports FP16 compute at a 1:1 ratio with FP32 (15.11 TFLOPS for both), while the Tesla M4 has no FP16 capability listed. The FP32 performance tells the story: 15.11 TFLOPS for the RTX 4060 versus 2.195 TFLOPS for the Tesla M4. Pixel rate is 118.1 GPixel/s versus 34.30 GPixel/s, and texture rate is 236.2 GTexel/s versus 68.61 GTexel/s.

The RTX 4060 is part of the GeForce 40-series, succeeding the GeForce 30 and preceding the GeForce 50. The Tesla M4 is from the Tesla Maxwell generation, succeeding Tesla Kepler and preceding Tesla Pascal. The RTX 4060 also supports DirectX 12 Ultimate, while the Tesla M4 tops out at DirectX 12 (12_1).

Where Each One Wins

The RTX 4060 wins in every measurable performance category. Its 461.4% lead in Geekbench OpenCL is the only direct benchmark comparison, but the specification data reinforces this dominance. It wins on raw compute, memory bandwidth, texture fill rate, and pixel throughput. It wins for any gaming workload, any ray tracing task, and any AI inference job that can use its tensor cores. The 8 GB GDDR6 memory also gives it a capacity advantage for modern game textures and larger datasets.

The Tesla M4 wins in power efficiency and physical footprint. Its 50 W TDP is less than half of the RTX 4060's 115 W, and its single-slot design with no power connector makes it easier to install in dense server configurations. Its PCIe 3.0 x16 interface, while older, offers more lanes than the RTX 4060's PCIe 4.0 x8.

For use cases, the RTX 4060 is the choice for a desktop workstation or gaming PC. The Tesla M4, with no display outputs, is not a graphics card in the traditional sense; it is a compute-only accelerator. The data suggests it could serve in a headless server where low power draw is critical and performance demands are minimal. However, given the 461.4% performance gap, even that niche is hard to justify unless the 50 W power budget is an absolute constraint. The RTX 4060 wins everywhere else.