NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER vs NVIDIA Tesla P4 Comparison

FAQ

Q: How do the two GPUs compare in raw compute performance?

A: The RTX 4070 SUPER delivers 35.48 TFLOPS FP32, while the Tesla P4 delivers 5.704 TFLOPS FP32. That is a 6.2x difference in favor of the RTX 4070 SUPER.

Q: Which GPU has more memory bandwidth?

A: The RTX 4070 SUPER has 504.2 GB/s of bandwidth across a 192-bit bus with 12 GB GDDR6X. The Tesla P4 has 192.3 GB/s across a 256-bit bus with 8 GB GDDR5. The newer card holds a 2.6x bandwidth advantage.

Q: Are these GPUs from the same architecture generation?

A: No. The RTX 4070 SUPER uses Ada Lovelace on a 5 nm process, while the Tesla P4 uses Pascal on a 16 nm process. They were released roughly eight years apart.

Q: Does the Tesla P4 support ray tracing or tensor cores?

A: The database records no RT cores and no tensor cores for the Tesla P4. The RTX 4070 SUPER includes 56 RT cores and 224 tensor cores.

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

A: The RTX 4070 SUPER wins both recorded head-to-head tests. In Geekbench OpenCL it scores 172,795 versus 34,947, a 394.4% advantage. In Geekbench Vulkan it scores 205,624 versus 40,309, a 410.1% advantage.

Q: How do their overall percentile rankings compare?

A: The RTX 4070 SUPER sits at the 83rd percentile of all GPUs, while the Tesla P4 sits at the 81st percentile. Despite the huge compute gap, both are above average in the database.

Architecture Differences

The RTX 4070 SUPER is built on Ada Lovelace, NVIDIA's modern gaming architecture, fabricated by TSMC on a 5 nm process. The chip, AD104, packs 35,800 million transistors into a 294 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 121.8M per mm². The Tesla P4, by contrast, uses the older Pascal architecture on a 16 nm process. Its GP104 chip contains 7,200 million transistors on a 314 mm² die, for a density of just 22.9M per mm². The density gap is enormous: the newer chip fits roughly five times more transistors per square millimeter.

The feature sets diverge sharply. The RTX 4070 SUPER carries 56 RT cores and 224 tensor cores, enabling hardware ray tracing and AI acceleration. The Tesla P4 has neither, as the database lists no RT cores and no tensor cores. The shading units tell a similar story: 7,168 on the RTX 4070 SUPER versus 2,560 on the Tesla P4. Texture mapping units number 224 versus 160, and ROPs 80 versus 64.

API support differs too. The RTX 4070 SUPER supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the Tesla P4 tops out at DirectX 12 (12_1). Both support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4. The RTX 4070 SUPER also has display outputs, including 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a, whereas the Tesla P4 has no display outputs at all, reflecting its intended role as a compute accelerator.

The process node and architecture choices explain most of the performance difference. Ada Lovelace was designed for high clock speeds and efficiency, while Pascal is a much older design with lower clocks and a less dense layout. The RTX 4070 SUPER boosts to 2475 MHz, the Tesla P4 to just 1114 MHz.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX 4070 SUPER wins every recorded benchmark in the database, so the use-case split is not about who wins, but about where each GPU's capabilities are relevant.

For gaming and graphics workloads, the RTX 4070 SUPER is the clear choice. It has modern DirectX 12 Ultimate support, hardware ray tracing, tensor cores for DLSS-style acceleration, and display outputs for connecting monitors. Its FP16 performance matches FP32 at 35.48 TFLOPS, which is useful for workloads that can use reduced precision. The Tesla P4, with no display outputs and no ray tracing, cannot serve as a gaming card in any practical sense.

For low-power compute deployments, the Tesla P4 has a niche. Its 75 W TDP is dramatically lower than the 220 W TDP of the RTX 4070 SUPER. It is a single-slot card with no power connectors, drawing power entirely from the PCIe slot. It requires only a 250 W suggested PSU, versus 550 W for the RTX 4070 SUPER. In dense server environments where power and space are constrained, the Tesla P4's small footprint and low power draw could be attractive for inference tasks that do not need the RTX 4070 SUPER's massive throughput.

The RTX 4070 SUPER also wins on memory capacity with 12 GB versus 8 GB, and on bandwidth with 504.2 GB/s versus 192.3 GB/s. The Tesla P4 does have a wider 256-bit bus, but the older GDDR5 memory cannot match the speed of GDDR6X.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ in nearly every specification category.

The RTX 4070 SUPER uses the AD104 chip on a 5 nm TSMC process with 35,800 million transistors and a 294 mm² die. The Tesla P4 uses GP104 on a 16 nm process with 7,200 million transistors and a 314 mm² die. The transistor density is 121.8M per mm² versus 22.9M per mm².

Clocks: the RTX 4070 SUPER runs at 1980 MHz base and 2475 MHz boost, with memory at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective). The Tesla P4 runs at 886 MHz base and 1114 MHz boost, with memory at 1502 MHz (6 Gbps effective).

Memory: 12 GB GDDR6X on a 192-bit bus with 504.2 GB/s bandwidth, versus 8 GB GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus with 192.3 GB/s.

Compute units: 7,168 shading units, 224 TMUs, 80 ROPs, 56 RT cores, and 224 tensor cores on the RTX 4070 SUPER. The Tesla P4 has 2,560 shading units, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and no RT or tensor cores.

Pixel and texture rates: 198.0 GPixel/s and 554.4 GTexel/s for the RTX 4070 SUPER, versus 71.30 GPixel/s and 178.2 GTexel/s for the Tesla P4.

FP32 and FP16: 35.48 TFLOPS for both FP32 and FP16 on the RTX 4070 SUPER (1:1 ratio). The Tesla P4 delivers 5.704 TFLOPS FP32 but only 89.12 GFLOPS FP16, a 1:64 ratio, meaning its FP16 performance is negligible by comparison.

Power and physical: 220 W TDP, dual-slot, 1x 16-pin power connector, 550 W suggested PSU, 267 mm length, 112 mm height, 42 mm width for the RTX 4070 SUPER. The Tesla P4 is 75 W TDP, single-slot, no power connectors, 250 W suggested PSU, and 168 mm length.

Bus and outputs: PCIe 4.0 x16 with 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a for the RTX 4070 SUPER. PCIe 3.0 x16 with no display outputs for the Tesla P4.

Release dates: the RTX 4070 SUPER launched in January 2024, the Tesla P4 in September 2016. Both are end-of-life.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

Only two benchmarks appear in the database with both cards tested, and the RTX 4070 SUPER wins both by a massive margin.

In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 4070 SUPER scores 172,795 against the Tesla P4's 34,947. That is a 394.4% advantage, meaning the newer card delivers roughly five times the OpenCL compute performance. The delta is so large that it suggests the Tesla P4 is not competitive in any compute scenario that can use the RTX 4070 SUPER.

In Geekbench Vulkan, the gap is even wider. The RTX 4070 SUPER scores 205,624 versus 40,309, a 410.1% advantage. Vulkan is a modern graphics API, and the RTX 4070 SUPER's architectural advantages, including higher clocks, more shading units, and faster memory, all contribute to this result.

The RTX 4070 SUPER also has a much richer benchmark history in the database. It has recorded scores for 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 (4,627), Passmark DirectX 10 (167), DirectX 11 (273), DirectX 12 (110), DirectX 9 (344), G2D (1,184), G3D (29,995), and GPU Compute (17,108). The Tesla P4 has no recorded scores for any of these tests, so a broader comparison is impossible with the current data.

The average benchmark scores reflect the same pattern. The RTX 4070 SUPER has an average benchmark score of 43,223, placing it at the 83rd percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the Quadro M6000 24 GB (43,262, 0.1% behind), the RTX 5050 Mobile (43,268, 0.1% behind), and the RTX 4090 Mobile (43,667, 1% ahead). The Tesla P4 has an average score of 37,628, at the 81st percentile. Its nearest rivals include the RTX 4070 (37,648, 0.1% ahead) and the RX Vega 56 (37,507, 0.3% behind). Interestingly, the Tesla P4's average is actually lower than the RTX 4070 SUPER's nearest rival scores, which means the two cards occupy different performance tiers entirely.

The Verdict

The data points to a one-sided comparison. The RTX 4070 SUPER wins both head-to-head benchmarks, has a higher average benchmark score, a higher percentile ranking, more memory, more bandwidth, more compute units, and a far more modern feature set. The Tesla P4 was released in 2016 and uses an architecture that predates ray tracing and tensor cores. Its only advantages are lower power draw and a smaller physical footprint.

For anyone choosing between these two for gaming, rendering, or general compute, the RTX 4070 SUPER is the only sensible option. It supports DirectX 12 Ultimate, has display outputs, and delivers over 5x the performance in both OpenCL and Vulkan. It also has the benefit of modern API support and a 1:1 FP16 to FP32 ratio, which is valuable for AI-adjacent workloads.

The Tesla P4 might still serve a purpose in legacy server deployments where power is scarce and the workload is simple enough not to need the RTX 4070 SUPER's throughput. At 75 W with no power connectors, it can slot into existing infrastructure without power cabling changes. But even in that scenario, the performance gap is so large that any workload capable of using the RTX 4070 SUPER would finish dramatically faster on it.

The average benchmark scores confirm these are not peers. The RTX 4070 SUPER's nearest rivals are modern or high-end cards like the RTX 4090 Mobile and Quadro M6000. The Tesla P4's nearest rivals include the RX Vega 56 and the RTX 4070, but its average score is actually below all of them. The 2-percentile gap in overall ranking (83 versus 81) understates how wide the actual compute gap is, because the Tesla P4's percentile is likely buoyed by the sheer number of weaker GPUs in the database.

In short, the RTX 4070 SUPER is the superior product by every measured metric. The Tesla P4 is an older, lower-power accelerator that cannot compete on performance and lacks the features modern workloads expect. The verdict is unambiguous: choose the RTX 4070 SUPER unless the workload is so power-constrained that a 75 W card is an absolute requirement.